Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)
Moonstruck Youth
Oil on board, 29.3 x 25cm (11½ x 9¾'')
Signed

Provenance: Waddington Galleries, Dublin; Associated American Artists; Sale, Sotheby's London, 11...

Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)
Moonstruck Youth
Oil on board, 29.3 x 25cm (11½ x 9¾'')
Signed

Provenance: Waddington Galleries, Dublin; Associated American Artists; Sale, Sotheby's London, 11 May 2006, lot 90, where purchased by the present owner.

With the outbreak of the Second World War, a number of countries including the Republic of Ireland declared neutrality. The arrival of returning Irish artists and refugee painters Basil Rákóczi and Kenneth Hall, the prime movers of the White Stag Group from London resulted in a distinctly bohemian and avant-garde art scene in Dublin. In 1941, Belfast born, Gerard Dillon moved to Dublin presenting watercolours to Dublin dealer, Victor Waddington who supported progressive artists in his South Anne Street gallery. Dillon became friends with Basil Rakóczi whose scenes from Aran in the early 1940s may have influenced his decision to visit the Islands a few years later. Although Dillons naïve images were not popular with critics or the buying public in the 1940s, Victor Waddington would have heeded the actions of Mainie Jellett, who championed Dillon, opening his first solo exhibition in The Country Shop in Dublin in 1942.

 

Between 1944-1945 Dillon traveled to Aran, where he made numerous sketches which he later transferred to oil paintings following his return to London to repair bomb-damaged buildings after the War. The idealized images of the Islands were in response to his upbringing in an industrial city and working life in London. One of his Aran pictures was included in the group Living Art Exhibition in Cecil Phillipss Leicester Gallery in London in 1946 where the President of the Associated American Artists (AAA), Reeves Levental viewed the exhibition. Impressed with the show, Levental decided the AAA should sponsor the first postwar American show of Irish art, Contemporary Irish Painting in New York in March 1947. Although Moonstruck Youth is not listed in the catalogue, the AAA label attached to the work suggests it was included in one of the exhibitions that travelled to Chicago, Ottawa or the new AAA gallery in Beverly Hills, California, later in 1947-8. Dillon made a note in his record book that this work, No. 18. Moonstruck Youth was sold in a list of pictures belonging to the artist at Waddington Galleries in 1946-7.

 

Moonstruck Youth depicts a moonlit scene with a barefoot youth staring out at the viewer. The title of the painting and the youths pose reveals the sitters view of Dillon as a stranger on Aran. Despite the sitters shy demeanor, Islanders learned from a young age to be hardy, remote in thought and feeling and above all, independent and self-reliant. The proximity of the sea to the cottages points to how people on Aran relied on the sea for food. The lone male figure is depicted in traditional dress style of the Aran Islands; wearing wide-legged homespun patched trousers ending well above the ankle and were usually worn with oiled wool jerseys. The bulky Jerseys, known today as the Aran Sweater, were knitted by women in the family with undyed homespun wool to help their husbands or sons weather the often-treacherous sea conditions near the Islands. Folklore stories record that individual families had their own distinct raised decorative stitch which also had its own meaning, and the islanders could identify a fisherman by this stitch in fishing accidents. Over the jersey, the young man is wearing a waistcoat, also known as a bainín jacket, or short coat of light, undyed homespun flannel without collar or pockets. The absence of a currach and shoes on the youths feet suggest the end of the day. The youth would have moved his light primitive vessel to safety while the sitters rawhide shoes would be soaking in water in the nearby cottage for fishing the following day. Known as Pampouties, the rawhide shoes prevent slipping in currachs when out at sea. Footwear had a lifespan of about a month and required soaking in water to keep them supple. The youths woven belt, known as a crios were made from coloured wools woven without a loom.

 

On one of his visits to Aran, Dillon wrote to a friend in London describing the most glorious holiday. Living among Irish speakers, he felt he was living in a foreign country and commented on the men and womens strange mode of dress. The holiday was a change away from the world, complete and absolute peace, living a very natural primitive life from day to day, not knowing what day of the week it is, hearing no news except a scrap when the boat arrived from Galway once a weekI painted life on Inishmore and had there the good luck to sell two watercolours to visitors to the island.

 

Karen Reihill, November 2019

 

 

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