The present painting is a wonderful re-discovery, having been purchased in 1951 from a Dublin gallery, after which it immediately went to America and has only come to light again now. It is another superb addition to Dillon’s celebrated works of the West of Ireland.

The location is Roundstone, and most likely depicts Errisbeg mountain in the background but, as was Dillon’s intention, he did not bind himself to literal representation. Rather he painted freely, devising rhythmical compositions inspired by his surroundings. This allowed him to develop more poetic responses in tune with his personal experience of the landscape and people. We see this to great effect in Village on the Hill: Dillon leads our eye up the winding road, following the enigmatic figure on a horse observed by the villagers, and towards the mountains in the distance. The distorted perspective, uneveness of the thatched cottages and the twisting stone walls create an altogether more engaging and lively subject.

The present work dates to circa 1951 - the year that Dillon had been offered the use of a cottage on the remote island of Inishlacken just off Roundstone, and to whom he invited fellow artists George Campbell and James MacIntyre to join him (documented forty years later in James MacIntyre’s Three Men on an Island, 1996). Perhaps the horseman represents Dillon or one of his friends - a stranger to the local inhabitants - who took up temporary residence among them, enchanted by the landscape and the way of life of the communities there. It was a world far removed from the political-social tensions of Belfast where Dillon had grown up, and the joy and freedom he found in the West of Ireland resulted in a highly evocative body of work, epitomised in Village on the Hill, that continues to capture our imagination today.