Aymone Marie Sylvie Renée de Faucigny-Lucinge et Coligny, Comtesse de Brantès (1905 - 1993)
Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1982
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
390 x 390 mm
Order this imageCollection
Mottisfont, Hampshire
NT 769797
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, Aymone Marie Sylvie Renée de Faucigny-Lucinge et Coligny, Comtesse de Brantès (1905 - 1993) by Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000), 1982. The mother-in-law of former President Giscard d'Estaing = Princess Aymone Marie Sylvie Renée de Faucigny-Lucinge et Coligny, married François Marie Joseph Abel Henri Sauvage, marquis of Brantès, who died in on Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp on 8 May 1944.
Full description
Oil painting on canvas, Aymone Marie Sylvie Renée de Faucigny-Lucinge et Coligny, Comtesse de Brantès (1905 - 1993) by Derek Hill (Southampton 1916 - London 2000), 1982. The mother-in-law of former President Giscard d'Estaing = Princess Aymone Marie Sylvie Renée de Faucigny-Lucinge et Coligny, married François Marie Joseph Abel Henri Sauvage, marquis of Brantès, who died in on Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp on 8 May 1944. Derek Hill was born and brought up in Romsey; his father was AJL Hill, a businessman and cricket captain of Hampshire. The family were friends of the Mountbattens and the Russells here at Mottisfont, and when Derek became an artist he continued to mix in high society, painting portraits of friends including John Betjeman, Noël Coward and Prince Charles. Although he often sought solitude on the remote Tory Islands off the Donegal coast, Hill was also very sociable. His sitters agreed that he was adept at managing simultaneously to paint and chat, quickly putting them at ease. Here, he has depicted the mother-in-law of the former French President, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. Hill has used a traditional technique for suggesting a complex personality: he has painted one side of her face as gentle, the other rather stern.
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), artist