Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)
Study for Tom Baker, Moyard
Ink and watercolour, 26 x 32cm (10¼ x 12½'')
Signed

 

Provenance: Artist's family by descent

 

 

Executed in 1950, the sitter in...

Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)
Study for Tom Baker, Moyard
Ink and watercolour, 26 x 32cm (10¼ x 12½'')
Signed

 

Provenance: Artist's family by descent

 

 

Executed in 1950, the sitter in this composition can be identified as Thomas Baker who met the artist when Dillon decided to rent a thatched cottage, Cloonederowen in Moyard in the West of Ireland. While Dillon stayed at Moyard he became friendly with the Baker family whose neighbouring farm supplied him with milk, eggs and potatoes. The youngest member of the Baker family, known as Tom had the daily task of bringing supplies to Dillon, who often had friends and family visiting from London, Dublin and Belfast. Seated on a bed, Thomas Baker is depicted in shorts and a jacket. In an interview with this writer Thomas Baker recalled sitting for Dillon when he was a young boy.

 

People were regularly moving in and out of the cottage but I remember Gerard

Dillon coming to stay because he paid me to be a model for his oil paintings

He did several sketches of me in Moyard, Roundstone and Leenane.

(Interview with Tom Baker, Moyard, Connemara, 15.6.11)

 

The drawings and watercolours were later transferred into known titles, Tom Baker by the Black Lake, (Private Collection), and The Yellow Bungalow (Ulster Museum). This watercolour Thomas Baker is a study for Thomas Baker, Moyard (private collection) which was chosen to be included in Gerard Dillons retrospective exhibition in 1972/3 in the Ulster Museum in Belfast and the Municipal Gallery in Dublin and was illustrated in the accompanying catalogue. (see illustration)

 

Karen Reihill

November, 2018

 

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