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Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) BEGINNING, 1968

Currency:EUR Category:Antiques / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:40,000.00 - 60,000.00 EUR
Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) BEGINNING, 1968
<B>Gerard Dillon (1916-1971)</B><BR>BEGINNING, 1968<BR>signed lower left; inscribed on reverse<BR>oil on canvas<BR>66 by 76cm., 26 by 30in.<BR>Provenance:<BR>De Vere's, Dublin, November 1995; Peppercanister Gallery, Dublin; Whence purchased by the present owners Exhibited: 'Gerard Dillon', Dawson Gallery, Dublin, 12 June - 2 July 1968, catalogue no. 17; In 1962 Dillon began a series of paintings incorporating the figure of the masked pierrot, which he would work on until his death (for a fuller discussion of the series see James White, Gerard Dillon: An Illustrated Biography, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1994, pages 90-94). The series began with And the Time Passes (1962), which depicted two clowns hand-in-hand and was a direct response to the death of his brother, Joe. Over the next three years Dillon's other two brothers died of the same heart defect that had taken Joe, and Dillon began meditating on his own mortality. The initial pierrot pictures thus took on an air of deep melancholia, culminating in The Brothers (1967), where the pierrot mourns three skeletons buried one on top of the other in the earth. In Beginnings the clouds are more amorphously shaped, suggestive of archaeological finds: flints, shells and bone shards. The pierrot stands in an attitude of contemplation, aware perhaps of his imminent return to the earth, wherein lies the clues to the beginning of time. The work almost certainly relates to another painting, Red Sky Wonder, exhibited at the Living Art Exhibition of 1968 (whereabouts unknown). Certainly the pierrot in Beginnings expresses with his clasped hands and balletic poise a sense of wonder and inspiration, that is in itself a marvel in a mature artist in his final years.
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