Lot 11: James Dixon (Irish, 1887-1970) A Muldoon Towed Into Greenport 56 x 76 cm. (22 x 30 in.)

A Muldoon Towed Into Greenport
signed indistinctly, inscribed and dated 'A Muldoon Towed Into Greenport/to get him out of the.../By James Dixon Tory Island/5.5.1967' (lower left)
oil on paper
56 x 76 cm. (22 x 30 in.)

PROVENANCE:
With Crane Kalman Gallery, London

James Dixon was born on Tory Island on June 2nd 1887. He was to spend his entire life on this isolated land nine miles from the Irish mainline, first as a sailor and fisherman, and then in his later years as an artist. Dixon in fact didn't take up painting until the 1950s when he was well into his sixties. In the late 1950s he became known to Derek Hill, the English painter who often vistited Tory Island for inspiration, and a friendship was struck up which bought James Dixon, or Jimmy as he was known to his friends and family, to the attention of the larger art community.

Dixon liked to paint with the hair of a donkey's tail, not the standard paintbrush of the modern aritst, but Derek Hill believed this lent his art the painterly quality one finds in it. Dixon also tended to prefer boat paint applied to either paper or board. The subject matter, like Alfred Wallis's, came from his own life experiences in and around Tory Island. Many of his works have lengthy descriptions that give his own personal account of the narrative he has painted.