BIOGRAPHY: ROBERT O' BYRNE reviews Derek Hillby Bruce Arnold, Quartet Books, 380pp, £35.
“Arnold includes the well-known anecdote of Hill being decried as a snob, to which he supposedly responded: ‘How amazing. I was only talking with the queen mother a few days ago, and she said just the same thing’
TEN YEARS after his death, where stands the reputation of Derek Hill? As the artist’s output was substantial, his work regularly turns up at auction, where it fetches prices that are neither remarkably low nor remarkably high. But his status in the painterly pantheon is probably not as great as he would have wished it to be. Nor, indeed, as great as loyal admirers believe it ought to be. One of that band, Bruce Arnold, has now written a book that is as much an argument on behalf of Hill’s work as it is an account of the man’s life.
A friend and fan, Arnold more than once uses the word “genius” and proposes that his subject merits better recognition than he receives at present or, indeed, was given during his long life. Only rarely, he says, did Hill’s talents win something approaching adequate appreciation, one of them being the retrospective organised for him at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1998.
That occasion, Arnold says, “had a profound effect in Derek’s chosen home of Ireland . . . On all sides I met with friends and acquaintances who acknowledged that here was a touch of greatness, a range of perceptions, a depth of understanding through eye, hand and paint which marked Derek Hill out for serious reassessment”. Arnold considers it to have been “a truly magnificent show”, thereby offering an amusing contrast with the recollection of the English critic Brian Sewell, who in his introduction to this book describes the RHA exhibition as “an ugly hang, ramshackle and disorderly”.
But divergent opinion has always been a feature of any assessments of Hill. Even the question of whether he should be classified as English, Irish or both, or whether the matter deserves discussion at all, continues to be the subject of debate. Born in England, he first came to Ireland in the mid-1940s, when aged almost 30, and a decade later bought a house in Co Donegal, subsequently and generously given to the State; in 1999 he received honorary Irish citizenship.
But Hill received little critical notice in either country, his name less cited on review pages than in social columns. (For years the Daily Telegraph’s Kenneth Rose, an old friend, would mention Hill’s latest activities.) When he did come to the attention of critics the outcome was not always satisfactory. A show at Dublin’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in 1971 led Brian Fallon of this newspaper to deem Hill “curiously old-fashioned” and his work “re-creating Corot, Degas and others in terms of a ‘modern sensibility’ ”.
The discomforting truth is that stylistically Hill was out of sync with the direction in which art had decisively moved even while he was still a young man, thereafter rendering him something of an anachronism, albeit one possessed of considerable technical abilities. His own tastes were decidedly old fashioned, with a consistent preference for the representative; when he organised an exhibition in Dublin in the spring of 1956 the featured artists included not just Corot and Degas but also Sickert, Steer, Graham Sutherland and even Landseer. The influences apparent in his work are predominantly 19th or early 20th century. A curious piece of self-criticism mentioned by Arnold concedes that the paintings he produced were like “an artistic bazaar where all comers can be suited” before citing the name of Corot, yet again, as well as those of Bonnard and Turner. “Picasso?” he rhetorically inquires before responding: “No we do not sell such things at the bazaar.”
As a young man he had spent time in Munich and Moscow, in the mid-1930s, studying theatre design, and, though Arnold does not comment on this, the best of his landscapes have a decidedly dramatic quality, looking like stage sets awaiting the cast’s arrival. The influence of two men, neither of them painters – the couturier Edward Molyneux and the art historian Bernard Berenson – helped to settle Hill’s mind on becoming an artist, and he was loyal to his task, specialising in the genres of landscape and portraiture. He demonstrated distinct aptitude for the former, especially when working on a small scale – in larger pictures he seemed to lose his way – and when presented with the kind of rugged prospect found in Donegal and, above all, on Tory Island. Whatever about Corot, the beneficial impact of Cezanne is evident in these paintings.
Hill’s portraits are more problematic, varying between acute character studies and superficial likenesses. Some of the finest are little more than preparatory studies; he could overwork a portrait and thereby mislay the sitter’s personality. But in their enormous number these pictures offer an insight into the scope of his social life, which took in everyone from Tory Island farmers to grandees. That he had a weakness for aristocracy and royalty cannot be denied; it was another aspect of his essentially old-fashioned persona. Arnold includes the well-known anecdote of Hill once being decried as a snob, to which he supposedly responded: “How amazing. I was only talking with the queen mother a few days ago, and she said just the same thing.”
There were two drawbacks to his maintaining a busy social life, flitting from one grand house to the next: it made him appear trivial in the eyes of many people and it took him away from his work. Although he spent periods entirely focused on his work, and quoted Degas’ remark that “if the artist wishes to be serious . . . he must once more sink himself into solitude”, he was unable to apply this policy with sufficient rigour. Hence the index to Arnold’s book is littered with familiar names – Cecil Beaton, Noel Coward, sundry Mitfords and Guinnesses – all of whom were good friends.
Hill placed a high value on his work, and particularly in old age he would take offence if he judged one of his pictures to have been hung with insufficient prominence. Arnold sums him up with the remark, “Derek did not want to be famous, he wanted to be recognised.” Specifically, he wanted to be recognised as a painter of significance. Yet, despite his biographer’s best efforts, I fear in death, as in life, this ambition will remain unrealised.
Robert O’Byrne is a writer and journalist. His Dictionary of Living Irish Artists is published this month. Derek Hill by Bruce Arnold will be launched at the Gutter Bookshop, Cow’s Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin, at 6.30pm on Tuesday; all welcome
