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PROPERTY FORMERLY IN THE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF SIR NOËL COWARD An Introduction to the Collection, by Barry Day At a London party to celebrate Noël’s 70th birthday his old friend Lord Louis Mountbatten said of him: 'There are probably greater painters than Noël, greater novelists than Noël, greater librettists, greater composers of music, greater singers, greater dancers, greater comedians, greater tragedians, greater stage producers, greater film directors, greater cabaret artistes, greater TV stars. If there are, there are twelve different people. Only one man combined all twelve different labels - 'The Master'.' He could easily have added several more. And yet Noël’s own verdict - as expressed in the lyrics to If Love Were All - was that the most he had was 'just a talent to amuse'. And as for being The Master - 'Oh, you know – Jack of all trades - master of none.' You have to be English to recognise duplicitous self-deception when you see it! A talent to confuse - among many others. You don’t write over fifty plays (some still to be produced), numerous films in which he either starred, wrote, directed (and on occasion all three), more than four hundred songs, a substantial amount of verse (he never called it poetry), two and a half autobiographies, thirty years’ worth of a Diary, a ballet, a novel, and hundreds of letters to and from anyone one had ever heard of in the arts, literature, politics and quite a few one had not, without being a genius. By the 1930s he was already well established in London and New York. And it was then another Muse came calling. He began to paint. From childhood he’d produced colourful caricatures of famous historical figures such as Nell Gwynn and Anna Pavlova and his concept of ladies of high fashion. But then there was a gap until sometime in the early thirties when - as his secretary Cole Lesley recorded - 'he began again, painting from time to time in water colours, usually seascapes with ships … rather naïve but, as in everything he attempted, with a style of his own.' The Kentish coast and countryside around his home, Goldenhurst, provided his early inspiration. Then one Sunday he visited his sometime friend Winston Churchill at Chartwell, Churchill’s own country retreat. Churchill himself was more than a competent amateur painter and - as in all things – a man of firm opinion. He commanded Noël to give up watercolours and paint (as he did) in oils instead: 'That way you can paint over your mistakes.' Noël took the great man’s advice and took to the new medium as easily as he had taken to the old one. In the post-war years, painting became something of an obsession with him and it wasn’t long before he’d infested his two closest companions - Coley and Graham Payn - with the bug. They all painted, as Noël recalled, like competitive maniacs and also critics. Coley tried to copy the Impressionists. 'Monet, Monet, Monet – that’s all you think about', Noël chided him. It wasn’t long before he’d decided what to call his own style: 'Touch-and-Gauguin.' He had Jamaica to blame for that … Noël had first visited the island at the insistence of his wartime spy boss, ‘Little Bill’ Stephenson that he take a brief rest before resuming his diplomatic mission and troop concerts. He was enchanted with what he saw and vowed to return after the war - which he duly did. It wasn’t long before he’d built two modest homes there and he would spend as much time there as his many other activities permitted. The location provided endless inspiration and in retrospect it can be seen that few painters of note (except Gauguin) dealt with the tropics in such detail and with such freedom of expression. By now he was beginning to sense that in this medium - as in so many others - he really did have something to offer and with modest immodesty he confided to his Diary in 1955, 'compared to the pretentious muck in some London galleries … my amateur efforts appear brilliant.' And once again, whenever they could, the Three Artistic Musketeers 'painted away like crazy.' 'Little Lad (Graham) is at work upon a very large ruined cathedral. I can’t think why he has such a penchant for hysterical Gothic. Perhaps he was assaulted in childhood by a nun … I, swifter than the eye can follow, have finished a group of negroes and am now busy with a crowded fairground with swings and roundabouts and what should be a Ferris wheel but looks like a steel ovary. The trouble with me is that I don’t know the meaning of peur ... I keep on doing lots of people walking about and I’m sick to death of them.' And later ... 'I am painting hundreds and hundreds of people on beaches and esplanades. It is my new ‘style’. My present masterpiece has to date one hundred and seventy when last counted and it isn’t half done. Coley, with his passion for statistics, says that means three hundred and forty shoes.' After he was knighted in 1970 - an honour Churchill had personally stymied as far back as 1942, even though King George VI had approved it - Noël more or less retired. He published nothing new. He even stopped keeping his Diary. Presumably he felt he had said all he wanted to say. His point had been proved over and over again. The one thing he never stopped doing however, was painting. It was his personal window to another world. And it was clearly one that others wished to share. When in 1988, Graham Payn, who was now running the Coward Estate, decided to put some of Noël’s work up for auction at Christie's, Noël would have been gratified to see the result. Proceeds almost trebled expectations. His ‘amateur efforts’ had, indeed, turned out to be brilliant.

Derek Hill (1916-2000)

Portrait of Noël Coward

Details

Derek Hill (1916-2000)
Portrait of Noël Coward
signed with initials 'D.H.' (lower centre)
oil on canvas, unframed
19 ¾ x 18 in. (50.3 x 45.3 cm.)

Special Notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. These lots have been imported from outside the EU for sale using a Temporary Import regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the Hammer price. VAT is also payable (at 20%) on the buyer’s Premium on a VAT inclusive basis. When a buyer of such a lot has registered an EU address but wishes to export the lot or complete the import into another EU country, he must advise Christie's immediately after the auction.

Lot Essay

Cole Lesley, Coward's secretary, remembers how Derek Hill taught Noël Coward, Graham Payn and himself, some of the basic preparations of painting in oil. 'Derek Hill, although still young, was already a formidably good painter. Derek himself had been influenced and helped by Edward (Molynieux) and later by Bernard Berenson, and he is now represented in the Tate and many other galleries of note. He kindly and patiently taught us much technically, including especially the colour with which to prime our canvases; up until then we had been painting straight on to the bright whiteness.' (C. Lesley, The Life of Noel Coward, London, 1976, p. 240)

Indeed Hill taught many people to realise their artistic potential. H.R.H. Prince of Wales reminisced that 'He was a priceless companion; a man of endlessly amusing, if naughty, stories about everybody who was anybody. As a painter, he was a perceptive observer of character both of person and the landscape. It always fascinated me how, as a young man, his great skill seemed to be in painting portraits.' (introduction to Christie's studio sale of Derek Hill, 17 May 2001).

Derek Hill painted many other notable sitters, including Sir John Gielgud, Sir Alec Guinness and L.P. Hartley and in doing so became a lifelong friend to many of his subjects. Lord Gowrie best encapsulates this when he says that 'Hill's portraits are not commissioned. They are encounters, relationships.' (G. Gowrie, Derek Hill An Appreciation, London, 1987, p. 8).

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