Derek Hill (painter)
| Derek Hill CBE, HRHA |
|
|---|---|
| Born |
Arthur Derek Hill 6 December 1916 Southampton, Hampshire, England |
| Died | 30 July 2000 (aged 83) London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | painting |
| Movement | Tory School |
Arthur Derek Hill, CBE, HRHA (6 December 1916 – 30 July 2000) was an English portrait and landscape painter long resident in Ireland.
Born at Southampton, in Hampshire, the son of a wealthy sugar trader, Hill first worked as a theatre designer in Leningrad in the 1930s and later as an historian.
In the Second World War he registered as a conscientious objector and worked on a farm.
His long association with Ireland began when he visited Glenveagh Castle, County Donegal to paint the portrait of the Irish-American art collector, Henry McIlhenny, whose grandfather had emigrated to the US from the nearby village of Milford, and who subsequently made a fortune from his patent gas meter.
Hill began to enjoy increased success as a portrait painter from the 1960s; his subjects including many notable composers, musicians, politicians and statesmen, such as broadcaster Gay Byrne, Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek and The Prince of Wales. He was also an enthusiastic art collector and traveller, with a wide range of friends such as Bryan Guinness and Isaiah Berlin. Greta Garbo visited Hill in the 1970s, a visit which formed inspiration for Frank McGuinness' 2010 play Greta Garbo Came to Donegal. In 1981, he donated his home, St. Columb's Rectory, near the village of Churchill, County Donegal, which he had owned since 1954, along with a considerable collection including work by Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas, Georges Braque, Graham Sutherland, Anna Ticho and Jack Butler Yeats to the State.
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