All Molly wanted from her brother’s estate was twenty-five oil paintings from Gerard’s West of Ireland period. My father simply gave her the works, but she then insisted on having his diaries. I was first to read the diaries in the days after my uncle’s death. My father read them much later and, contrary to my advice, erased all comments in them about Molly and Vincent, hoping to save them embarrassment. He also blacked out criticisms directed at some leading figures in the Dublin art world. On learning of the dairies, Uncle Gerard’s brother, Fr Vincent, who was by then retired and living in Texas, asked Molly to send them to him. I suspected then, and still do, he was anxious to discover if they contained any scandalous revelations about him. Because of this, his relationship with my parents suffered when the diaries were passed to Molly. The rift between Vincent and my parents was so deep he never got his wish to be buried in Belfast with Joe and Gerard.
Molly subsequently claimed she sent the diaries to Fr Vincent Dillon, but there was no proof she ever did. I was not made aware of everything my father erased in the diaries. I believe there were at least two journals that were undated. I told my father I was sure Molly returned to London in the weeks after my Uncle Gerard’s death with one or two of these journals, which were additional to the ones my father passed to her months later. My father did not wish to challenge her. When she learned that the diaries I read in the days after my uncle died contained revelations about his sexuality, she demanded them from my father. I never saw those writings again.
In fact, no one in my family ever saw the journals after they were in Molly’s hands. She was evasive when I asked her about them a decade later. When I pressed her, she hinted they had been destroyed, although she refused to be specific. They were not among her possessions after her death, and there was no evidence Fr Vincent ever had control of them. It is possible Molly lied about having sent them to her brother in Texas. She may have destroyed them because she was reckless with some of Uncle Gerard’s possessions. While sorting out papers and art works in the days following his funeral, she lit a small bonfire in his garden and proceeded to burn letters and more disturbingly drawings, which she felt did not measure up to his talent. She was a single-minded, capricious and wilful woman. She was the type of person one could not reason with, a fact Gerard found out to his cost when he lived with her in London.
Before Uncle Gerard’s death, his Dublin art dealer, Leo Smith, launched a clever ‘wine-and-dine campaign’ to court my parents, certain they would inherit a large art collection. Leo owned and ran the Dawson Gallery, one of Dublin’s finest and most celebrated galleries. He was a shrewd, sophisticated man with a wealth of knowledge of the art world, having worked for years in Bond Street in London. According to George Campbell, the fact he was gay partly determined his close, personal rapport with Gerard. When Leo dined with my parents, he sometimes exhibited his artsy, bohemian side and treated my mother in particular to scandalous stories and risqué jokes about well-known Dubliners. He adored the letters she wrote to him and was fond of quoting lines from them to business acquaintances. He convinced my father if anything happened to Uncle Gerard he was the person to secure his legacy. It would be important he stressed, to ensure only one person managed and sold the work Gerard left behind. It was clear from Leo Smith’s comments to my parents that my uncle had told him he was bequeathing his work to my father.
Leo explained to my father he had handled the estate of Jack Yeats and other prominent artists. In the process, he learned that when an artist died his reputation went into decline because the market was flooded with his or her creations by heirs determined to make a quick buck. As a consequence, the value of the work plummeted, and the artist’s reputation suffered for decades or in some cases went into a serious decline. Gerard’s legacy would be assured only if his paintings were released for sale over time to maximise interest in them, thereby enhancing their value. As Leo put it, the ultimate goal was to honour Gerard by ‘handling his work in a fashion that solidified his place in the history of Irish art’. The logic appealed to my father, who loved Gerard and always wanted him to be considered one of Ireland’s ‘greats’. Shortly after Uncle Gerard’s death, my parents told me they were convinced Leo had the ability and respect for my uncle to handle the art he left behind. Clearly, Leo Smith’s campaign in the months before my uncle’s passing had proved successful.
What happened next constitutes, in my opinion, one of the hidden scandals of the Irish art world. On learning my father had given Aunt Molly twenty-five oil paintings, Leo Smith flew right away to London and bought them from her at a knock-down price, knowing she was living on a pension and needed the money. This angered me when I found out about it years later. Leo’s main objective, however, was to get his hands on the rest of the art Uncle Gerard left behind. He persuaded my father, against my judgment and that of a close family friend, who also happened to be a lawyer, that he was ready to buy the work and do all the wonderful things only he could do with it. Of course, he would have to get it at the right price, he pointed out. Hundreds of works were removed from Gerard’s home and transferred for safe keeping to the Killiney home of a leading Dublin solicitor. They included major oils, watercolours, drawings and mixed media. In the meantime, Leo Smith put in motion a strategy to ensure he could purchase them at a price that suited him. He began by enlisting the help of his friend, James White, an international art expert and former director of the National Gallery of Ireland. White, who would later publish, Gerard Dillon – An Illustrated Biography, knew and personally admired Gerard’s work to the extent most people deemed him the sole expert on him. It was a clever move by Smith because any valuation by White of Dillon’s works would not be challenged should my father decide to seek an alternative valuation from another expert. Leo Smith, I believe, was confident my parents and Gerard’s sister, Molly, would not question White’s judgment. He was right.
White subsequently valued the work in a way that ensured Leo Smith acquired it for a ridiculous price. I recall seeing White’s valuation document and being appalled by the prices he attached to some of the work. Etchings, for example, were listed at fifty pence. I am confident a copy of White’s valuation, as well as numerous other documents related to my late uncle’s life and work, were among my father’s possessions before he died in 2007. For the purpose of this book, I asked the executors of my late father’s estate, my brother, Dr Patrick Dillon and my sister, Ursula Mc Laughlin, about the archive of documents related to Uncle Gerard. They told me no such archive existed even though I had seen parts of it with my own eyes.
My father could have bought the Dillon collection instead of permitting Leo Smith to purchase it. In fact, a family friend offered to loan him money to buy it, but by then Smith had done a marvellous job of convincing my parents and Molly only he could deliver Gerard Dillon’s proper legacy. I cannot be exact about the overall value placed on Gerard’s work, but I believe it did not exceed £6,000. Not long after Leo Smith acquired the collection he died on his way from a funeral in Dublin. Ironically, he left no will and the collection was passed to his heirs to sell as they saw fit.
Before James White died, I had an opportunity to talk to him about my uncle’s unusual relationship with Leo Smith. I remarked how George Campbell had, once or twice, hinted that there was much more he could say about it. White smiled in a way that suggested he was the keeper of secrets. He admitted that Leo and Gerard shared a habit of ‘cruising’ for lovers in Dublin’s docks area. He suggested they may even have done this together on some occasions. According to White, Leo and Gerard were very close but had never been lovers, even though Leo loved and desired a physical relationship with Gerard. Unlike Gerard, Leo was indiscreet and liked to confide in White. Gerard was secretive. White admitted my uncle never opened up to him about his sexuality. I have often wondered how and why White became Leo’s ‘confessor’. One thing that stands out about White is how he genuinely feared, when writing the book on my uncle, that if he spilled all his secrets about Leo and Gerard, he risked being ostracised by his contemporaries. Nevertheless, he managed during his research for the book to encourage close friends of Gerard’s to talk to him off the record about matters that had remained hidden for decades, including the closeted lives of Gerard’s siblings, Joe, Molly and Vincent. I regretted that White lacked the tenacity to publish what he learned, knowing it could help future art historians.
FOUR
George