Originally from Hampshire, Derek Hill studied design in Munich, Paris and Vienna before making Tory Island, off the Donegal coast, his adoptive home. Hill was captivated by the rugged charm of Tory Island. He is recognised as the founder of the ‘Tory Island painters’ and he put the culture of this little island on the artistic map through his subtle landscapes.
Dunlop grew up surrounded by seminal figures of the Irish literary renaissance. His mother, Eleanor Dunlop was a watercolour artist while his father was a great friend of W. B. Yeats, James Stephens and George Russell.
In addition to painting, Dunlop was a prolific author. Examples of his paintings can be seen in the Tate Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, London.
Stanley Prosser was born in Manchester on 1 February 1887, and brought to Belfast by his father James Prosser at the age of eleven. He entered what was then the Belfast School of Art, was trained as a lithographer and worked as a damask designer in the linen trade. Thus Prosser followed the same pattern as artists such as William Conor and Hans Iten, who came to Belfast from Switzerland to work as a damask designer in the city which was at that time the linen capital of the world.
Prosser was the brother-in-law of the distinguished Ulster landscape painter James Humbert Craig (1877-1944), ten years older than he. They married two sisters named Lilburn. After Craig's death Prosser wrote an entertaining account of his career, published in Lagan Magazine in 1946.
He was also a friend of the novelist Forrest Ried, who chose to work in isolation in Belfast. Between 1923 and 1927 he exhibited fourteen watercolours at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, and contributed to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembly in 1924. He was elected a Member of the Belfast Art Society in 1922, was Vice- President in 1926, and in 1930 was one of the first Associates of the Club's successor, the Ulster Academy of Arts. Subsequently he was Vice-President in 1934.
She participated at the Oireachtas Art Exhibitions of the 1950s, and recently has exhibited at the Oriel Gallery, Dublin, and the James Gallery, Dalkey.