WHYTE'S EXCEPTIONAL IRISH ART MONDAY 7 DECEMBER 2020

96 60 Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) THE TINKER FAMILY, 1957 oil on board signed lower right; titled in black paint on reverse; also with original plaque preserved on reverse; with IELA label and James Bourlet labels also on reverse 31 by 18.75in. (78.7 by 47.6cm) Frame Size: 0 by 0in. (0 by 0cm) Condition: Excellent condition. Paint surface is clean and stable. Board equally stable. Provenance: Fr. Ó Loideáin, Ard Treasa Gallery, Clarendon Street, Dublin; From whom acquired by the previous owner; Gifted to the present owner Exhibited: Irish Exhibition of Living Art, Dublin, 1957 Literature: White, James, Gerard Dillon, An Illustrated Biography, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1994, p.112; (listed) Gerard Dillon, like other Irish artists including Jack B. Yeats, Louis le Brocquy and Nano Reid, was inspired by the life and culture of Irish Travellers. Born into a Catholic family in the Falls Road area of Belfast in 1916, Dillon embraced the romantic nationalist vision of an authentic, unspoilt Ireland identified with the western seaboard. He considered Travellers, and their way of life, to be more authentically Irish and less contaminated by the influence of British rule, than his own origins in urban Ulster. This idea of Travellers as more authentic than settled communities, may have arisen from theories about the origins of Irish Travellers, including speculation that their ancestors originated in pre-Gaelic society; that they descended from people who were made homeless during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the 1650s, or that their ancestors were displaced during the famines of 1741 and the 1840s. During the 1950s, when this work was painted, the pejorative term ‘Tinkers’ referencing Travellers’ traditional associations with tin-smithing and metal work was in common usage and Dillon’s title would not have implied the negative connotations that a contemporary audience would associate with the term. In fact, as well as admiring Travellers for being authentically Irish, Dillon may have identified with their traditionally nomadic way of life. From 1934, when he first left Belfast aged 18, Dillon spent the majority of his life moving between London, Belfast, Dublin and Connemara. In London, he worked manual jobs to make enough money to allow him to travel back to the west to paint. Although he is best known for his paintings of Connemara, it may have been in the Boyne Valley, while staying with his friend Nano Reid, that Dillon first observed and painted Travellers. Reid produced a number of images of Travellers living in and around Drogheda including Tinkers at the Gate now in the collection of The Model, Sligo. While Reid tended to use her expressive style to represent a group of Travellers from a distance, Dillon focused in on the individuals recording their features and conveying their personalities. The Tinker Family depicts a small family group including an infant and a small girl peeking from behind her mother’s skirts. The girl is similar to the child in Dillon’s painting Little Girl’s Wonder and the father figure is reminiscent of the men in Pub Group Connemara. Unusually, the family are depicted in an urban space rather than the landscape. The effect is to focus attention on the plight of the family, who appear uncomfortable and displaced. The stark background emphasises their bare feet and suggests that despite romanticising the Travellers’ way of life, Dillon was also sympathetic to their position on the margins of society and the harsh economic and social realities that they faced. Dr Riann Coulter November 2020 €80,000-€120,000 (£71,110-£106,670 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot60