Mount Athos, Waiting for the Early Boat
Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1980
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
220 x 220 mm
Place of origin
Greece
Order this imageCollection
Mottisfont, Hampshire
NT 769775
Caption
Derek Hill was best known in Britain as a portrait painter, but is now more famous for the wild landscapes produced in his adopted home of Ireland. He started off studying stage design in Munich, Paris and Vienna (1933-5), and for a time worked under Karl Schwitters. By 1938 he had abandoned the idea of stage design and began to paint. He painted the portraits of a huge cast of characters, including Bernard Berenson, Lord Mountbatten, Isaiah Berlin, John Betjeman, and Noël Coward, amongst many others. Hill's landscapes, by contrast, are lonely and seldom peopled. As a director of the British School in Rome in the 1950s, Hill nourished such talent as Michael Andrews, John Bratby and Anthony Fry. His own art collection was very fine with great examples of the misty Thames landscape and early abstract paintings of his friend, Victor Pasmore.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Mount Athos, Waiting for the Early Boat by Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000), 1980.
Full description
Oil painting on canvas, Mount Athos, Waiting for the Early Boat by Derek Hill, 1980. Part of the Derek Hill Collection. Mount Athos is a holy mountain in Macedonia in Greece, home to twenty Eastern Orthodox monasteries. Derek Hill visited it regularly, entranced by its remote location, beauty and meditative atmosphere. Every visit a revelation anew…The peace and silence here is sublime – only birds and the all-night chanting in Serbian in the church far below. From his many paintings of Mount Athos it’s clear that Hill was particularly struck by the contrast between the stark silhouettes of dark-robed monks and the pale stone of the quayside. Here, he has made them almost into an abstract study of shapes and forms. The monks seem to embody their vocation, contemplative at all times.
Provenance
Presented by Derek Hill (1916 - 2000) through The National Art Collections Fund (Art Fund), 1996
Credit line
Mottisfont Abbey,The Derek Hill Collection (presented to the National Trust through the National Art-Collections Fund in 1996)
Makers and roles
Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000), publisher
Exhibition history
Derek Hill centenary exhibition., The Redfern Gallery, London, 2016 Derek Hill centenary exhibition., Glebe Gallery, Co. Donegal, Ireland, 2016