WHYTES IMPORTANT IRISH ART 30 MAY 2016

Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)

ROMANTIC TINKER

oil on canvas

signed lower left; with labels of Associated American Artists Galleries on reverse

14 x 18in. (35.56 x 45.72cm)

Provenance:

Associated American Artists Galleries, New York, 1947;

Private collection, USA;

Thence by family descent

Exhibited:

Associated American Artists Galleries, 5th Avenue, New York (Also Chicago) March 1947 [catalogue un-

traced]

This painting which was first sold during an exhibition of Irish art held at the Associated American Artists

Galleries, New York, in 1947 is also set in a west of Ireland landscape. In this case, a man kneels down to a

woman and child who are sitting at the side of the road. The bright red cart in the background is familiar

from a number of Dillon’s paintings of Connemara from this period. The term Tinker which Dillon uses in

the title, is now considered derogatory but was in common usage during the 1940s.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Irish artists including Jack B. Yeats and Louis le Brocquy painted travellers and

romanticised their way of life for similar reasons as British and European artists, such as Augustus John, had

done a few years before. Traveller culture and their specific way of life, was considered to be more authentic

and less tainted by materialism and British rule. In this image, it is unclear whether the man and woman are

related or whether this is a chance meeting. There are two more figures on the cart who appear to be waiting

for the man to come back. The man is dressed in a traditional waistcoat and kerchief and the barefoot woman

wraps herself and her child in a large shawl not unlike the one featured in Shawl (lot 39). Dillon’s observation

of this scene verges on the ethnographic. Not only was he only a visitor in Connemara but he was also a boy

‘from the red brick city’ for whom the west and its inhabitants were exotic and worthy subjects for art.

Dr Riann Coulter

April 2016

€15,000-€20,000 (£11,810-£15,750 approx.)