“Our Lady of the Hills”, David Jones, 1921, Ditchling Museum.
In May 1921 Jones spent three days walking the old pilgrim road from Orpington to Canterbury. On the way he made a sketch of the Kentish hills which he later finished as an oil painting entitled “North Downs”. He worked in the flat of Catholic art student, Dorothea de Halpert, with whom he had fallen in love. She had rejected his advances would marry another, but they remained life long friends. Towards the end of that year Jones exhibited a study for “North Downs” alongside this “Our Lady of the Hills”. In September of that same year Jones had become a Catholic. This virgin and child owes much to works by Bellini and Mantegna with which he would have been familiar. In their works the landscape was painted in conversation with the main subject, achieving a harmony of objects shown, colour and form. Given what is known of Jones’ life in the months during which he worked on this painting, surely something of his inner world is revealed. in this Virgin there is something of his beloved Dorothea. After all he was painting it in her flat. And as he had made his way on foot on through the Kentish hills, he would surely have prayed to our Lady. The title suggests the visitation but that joy eluded Jones. As with the paintings of Bellini, Our Lady is shown gazing sadly upon her child with his future suffering and death in view. Already in those post war years he had begun to suffer bouts of depression and anxiety. And yet, she is so beautiful!
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