Derek Hill

Derek was a major snob and lover of the good life, but an interesting caring godfather. My dad got to know him at the British School in Rome, where he had a years scholarship. I was christened at St Columbs in Donegal. The house is now a national museum. The following is extracted from one of the art capitalists, writing to encourage purchase of his work.

Renowned for his society portraits and arresting scenes of Co. Donegal and Tory Island, Derek Hill’s contribution to 20th century Irish Art is without dispute. His long and varied career saw him embrace stage design, appointed art director of the British School in Rome, write books on Islamic architecture and orchestrate major public exhibitions such as the Landseer show at the Royal Academy in 1961.

Hill remained so personally attached to many of his paintings that he was often loath to let them go, no matter how high the price offered. Born in Southampton, Hill (1916-2000) left school aged 16, at first pursuing a career in stage design but later rejecting this for painting. In time, he established himself as a successful portrait artist of the British establishment and fashionable society, including such notable sitters as H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, Lord Mountbatten, Cecil Beaton and Noel Coward.

Landscape painting, however, remained his first love and in 1954 he bought St Colombs – a house in Churchill, Co. Donegal. Living in the northwest of Ireland fired his imagination, as did his 'discovery' in 1956 of Tory Island, off the Donegal coast, and it was here that his landscape painting truly came into its own. Hill purchased a hut on the island and for the next 30 years, produced some of his most evocative works.

The seclusion of Tory suited Hill. He was a man who enjoyed his own company and it was arguably this factor and his measured acceptance of it, that contributed to his ability to draw on the starkness and loneliness of such places to develop his craft and produce his most striking work. Later, when Hill travelled the world – visiting Turkey, Yemen and Afghanistan – his observations recall the light, colour and structure observed on this weather-beaten island.

Hill painted H.R.H. The Prince of Wales on a several occasions, initially painting the Prince for Trinity, his former college at Cambridge. Hill once commented on his hope that his portraits conveyed the Prince’s “warm, sensitive and understanding humanity: a concern and interest in whatever he undertakes”.

I remember watching him paint a noteable and it was interesting to see him fixate on the furniture. The poor guy was probably paying a lot for the portrait and the chest of drawers were getting most of his artistic juices.