The Derek Hill Collection
If you are driving from Falcarrig or Gortahurk towards Churchill in County Donegal and if you take the road which goes through the Gap of Muckish you pass through what must be one of the most desolate and barren parts of this country. Nothing seems to grow. The only relief from the stark greyness of the place are the coloured bags of turf that dot the landscape every so often. Colm Toibin writes more about Derek Hill's art collection.
Suddenly, however, there is a change. A sudden change. You could draw a line between what is bleak and woe-begone and land that is lush. Something changes.
The sense of luscious growth is well captured in the painting on the right by Patrick Swift who died in Portugal last month. It is a painting of the garden in Derek Hill's house in Churchill, County Donegal where Swift and his wife used to rent a cottage.
Derek Hill bought the house with twenty acres in 1953 for £1,000. For the past 17 years he has been trying to leave his house
and his collections of paintings to the nation. The gallery to house the paintings has been now constructed by the Board of Works and will be open to the public for six months of the year.
At 67 Derek Hill must still be the youngest person ever to leave anything to the nation.
Derek Hill is known for his portraits of the rich and the famous. His portrait of Archbishop McQuaid in the collection of St Vincent's Hospital shows John Charles in all his power and glory. Hill liked McQuaid; he found him honest and sincere. Before he sat for the portrait McQuaid remarked to Hill: "I'm afraid, Mr Hill, you'll find me very reactionary."
He is one of the few people to have seen Graham Sutherland's portrait of Churchill which Lady Churchill destroyed. One of his own portraits of an elderly Princess Radziwill was also destroyed-at the suggestion of Nancy Mitford. He professes an inability to flatter people when he is painting them. He has recently been doing some sketches of Tony O'Reilly.
Hill is also known as a landscape painter; he points out that he is a very unfashionable landscape painter. He has painted landscapes in Italy and Greece, and lived for a time in a cottage in Bernard Berenson's garden. He also paints in Donegal and is particularly known for his paintings of Tory Island; he has championed the work of a number of painters, primitive painters, on Tory Island. A recent BBC film showed him dancing at a ceili on the island, but in fact he spends very little time in the hut he rents on the island.
He is perhaps, as one art commentator points out, best known for knowing everybody. In a short period of time he can mention Greta Garbo ("Oh Derek, after seeing this house I feel quite tidy.") ,several famous concert pianists, violinists and cellists, Oscar Kokoscka, Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, Erskine Childers, Michael Tippett, Benjamin Britten, Jack B. Yeats and many more.
Hill is also known as a collector. He began in the 1940s. "When I sold a picture of mine I usually tried to buy
a picture:" He was also assisted by a considerable private fortune. His early acquisitions include a Henry Moore bronze statue for £25. He has acquired an eclectic collection of the work of Irish and British painters. He says that he has never bought any painting because it might become more valuable. He bought work he liked and which "told me something about painting".
He is leaving his house shortly to move to a smaller one nearby. He also retains a flat in London and a studio in Dorset. His house with all its furniture will be also open to the public from Easter to September.