Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) 'Pub Group - Connemara' Oil on board Exhibited: * 'Gerard Dillon' exhibition, The Dawson Gallery, where purchased by current owner (original exhibition label verso). *...

Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) 'Pub Group - Connemara' Oil on board Exhibited: * 'Gerard Dillon' exhibition, The Dawson Gallery, where purchased by current owner (original exhibition label verso). * 'Gerard Dillon Retrospective Exhibition', Ulster Museum, Nov-Dec 1972, Cat No. 58; Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, Jan-Feb 1973, Cat No. 58. This is an arresting and most unusual work by the artist but full of his awareness of the vagaries of the human condition especially as seen in pubs and drinking places. The artist was a very convivial and highly sociable person and was noted in his London days for bringing his pint glass from pub to pub so as to be in the swing of things immediately without the rubric of having to go and order his drink thus losing contact with his fellow men or a moment's company. In attempting to set down some painting structure or formula for himself he tried many technical routes including sgraffitto, using objets trouves, collage and a very deliberate faux na?ve style to obtain what was for him a satisfactory pictorial resolution. He was by instinct a figurative painter or perhaps a painter of the figure as it exemplified and represented the human condition. In this work we see a group of drinkers gathered possibly in a pool hall and he uses a device of linear enclosure of the painted forms to give each figure it's distinctive character. His partial interest in cubism gives the work it's frieze like composition, so that it is more like a tableau vivant than it is a typical pub interior. His long friendship with Nano Reid, as they had lived together on the Island of Inishlacken in the 1950s producing work for the great Dublin Art Dealer Victor Waddington at the stipend of ?1-10 a week, obviously impacted on this kind of work, in that the linear quality of Reid is used to great effect here, but Dillon changes the direction of the viewer's gaze by leaving the men in the foreground ''en grisille'' and using the flesh tones of the figure in the middle distance to bring one's eye into the composition. The artist also makes a play on the kind of pullover argyle pattern pullover on the centre figure and the ''fag'' in his mouth and the cut of the suits to keep the viewers attention. The work whilst upright in formal structure is kept in a linear format and apart from the seated men on stools in the background there are no other distractions in the background. Ciar?n MacGonigal November 2006

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