Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)

Resting Tinkers

Oil on board, 51 x 60cm (20 x 24")

Signed

Exhibited: "Gerard Dillon and George Campbell" Exhibition, Picadilly Gallery, London, June 1955,...

Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)

Resting Tinkers

Oil on board, 51 x 60cm (20 x 24")

Signed

Exhibited: "Gerard Dillon and George Campbell" Exhibition, Picadilly Gallery, London, June 1955, Catalogue No.49
"Gerard Dillon and George Campbell" Exhibition, The Irish Club, London, July 1955, Catalogue No.8
"Gerard Dillon Exhibition", CEMA Gallery Belfast, March 1956, Catalogue No. 21
"Gerard Dillon Exhibition", The Dawson Gallery, October 1957, Catalogue No. 24
"George Campbell and the Belfast Boys", Summer Loan Show Exhibition, Adam's, Dublin, July 2015/ The Ava Gallery, August 2015, Catalogue No.24

Literature: "George Campbell and the Belfast Boys" by Karen Reihill 2015, illustrated page 23

Executed in the mid 1950s, when the artist was living as a tenant in his sister Mollies house at 102 Abbey Road, North West London, this work was first included in Dillons joint exhibition with his close friend George Campbell at the Piccadilly Gallery, London in June 1955. The painting appeared a month later in another exhibition with George Campbell in Exhibition of Irish Painters at the Irish Club, 82 Eaton Square, South West London,

 

In 1950, staying in the West of Ireland, Dillon became friendly with a band of very colourful tinkers who told him about their culture and origins. Resting Tinkers may have been inspired by this personal experience years earlier.

 

Dillon routinely spent time in Connemara during the summer to seek out subject matter for his exhibitions abroad and in Ireland. Writing his biography for his first one-man exhibition in America at the Maxwell Galleries, San Francisco in July 1954, Dillon stated, I love the simplicity of the country people, everything about them, the way they live, think, dress etc.I love the Irish peasants best of all.

 

Stylistically similar to another work, Tinkers-Outside The City which was sold in these salerooms, (lot 116, 31/6/06) Dillon employs the same pictorial device of placing a family with utensils in front of a brick wall. The placing of a teapot and saucepan close to the couple smoking may be a reference to the origins of tinkers who were known to mend domestic utensils and were referred to as Tinsmiths. In Tinkers-outside the City, Dillon depicts the family bordering a city and here the family appear on a roadside in the country where the artist delights in experimenting with muted tones of colour and shapes indicating his interest in pattern and design.

 

This painting was chosen for the artists solo exhibition with the Council for The Encouragement of Music And The Arts, Northern Ireland (CEMA) in 1956. The writer, Gerard Keenan wrote the foreword in the catalogue and referred to his tinker family as a masterpiece and noted how refreshing not to humbugged into an Abbey Theatre response; the painting remains a painting, a pattern of coloured shapes; the artist has repressed anecdote and psychology.

 

Karen Reihill

September 2015

 

 

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