Derek Hill's links with Ireland are numerous and close.
Already a frequent visitor to this country, he made Donegal his home in 1954. He has been a member of the Wexford Opera Council since 1956, and the Tory Island artists would never have painted without his example and encouragement. He made a gift to the State of his house - St Columb's near Church Hill - and substantial art collection. Both the house and the adjoining Glebe Gallery are open to the public.
Hill was born in Southampton in 1916. On leaving school he went to study stage design in Munich in 1933, an experience which introduced him to another great passion: travel. He went on to Vienna, then eastwards through Russia, eventually visiting China and Japan.
He is an inveterate traveller and collector, and has also spent much time in Italy. Though he has worked in theatre as a designer, painting gradually became a more serious interest.
During the war years he worked on a farm as a conscientious objector. Immediately afterwards he came to Ireland and painted on the west coast, staying for some time on Achill.
He first visited Donegal as a guest of Henry McIlhenny, who then owned Glenveagh Castle, around 1949. A few years later, McIlhenny told him about a nearby Regency house that was for sale.
"I was indecisive," Hill later recalled. "I waited. By the next year the price had fallen so low I had to buy it."
He bought St Columb's, a beautiful glebe house, and 20 acres on the shores of Lough Gartan for £1,000. This became his base for travelling, a centre for entertaining and a home for his growing collection of paintings, furniture and other artefacts. When he gave St Columb's and its contents to the State in 1981 he moved to a cottage close by.
From about 1956 he began to visit Tory Island to paint. He has done some of his best work in primitive conditions there, staying in a tiny hut originally built to monitor shipping during the first World War. When an islander, James Dixon, saw Hill painting he thought he could do better himself. His efforts were the beginnings of the Tory Island school of painters, who have since exhibited internationally to great acclaim.
Hill's spartan lifestyle on Tory Island is in marked contrast to his more social side. He loves mixing in high society, and has painted many portraits of the rich and titled, but sociability is balanced by a need for solitude.
"I like people," he has said. "But I cannot have a day without the need to spend several hours entirely alone."