Hector McDonnell was born and raised at Glenarm in Co. Antrim, the youngest son of an unusual couple, the thirteenth earl and countess of Antrim.  His father tried, not entirely successfully to reconcile his radical left-wing convictions with his enjoyment of playing the aristocrat both on and off his estate, and threw his energy into many causes, including the National Trust, of which he was chairman for many years.  McDonnell's mother was a hard-working sculptress, as well as a wickedly clever cartoonist, with the consequence that he grew up in a strange environment, frequently having to spend his days either standing naked as his mother's model or else driving with his father to decide on the fate of some crumbling relic-of-old-decency mansion.

After leaving school in 1964, McDonnell went to Munich and then Vienna to study painting and sculpture, working for a time in the studio of Hans Wotruba, the last of Vienna's great Secessionist sculptors.  Wotruba did not usually let footloose teenagers into his studio, but he had only met one other Irishman before, James Joyce, and presuming that all other Irishmen were similar geniuses he showed him much kindness.  McDonnell then went to Oxford and took a degree in History, but he spent many of his afternoons in the Ruskin doing life drawing, and by the time he finished his course he had decided to become a painter.  He married, set up in a small house in South London and threw himself into his work.  After two years during which he survived by selling his paintings privately, he was given a show at the Hamet Gallery in Cork Street, London.  He soon joined the emiment Fischer Fine Art Gallery in London and the Fischers consequently promoted McDonnell in Europe.  He had exhibitions in Munich and Vienna, took part in two prestigious shows in Paris promoting Contemporary International Realism, and then won one of Germany's most illustrious art prizes, the Darmstadter Kunstpreis.  In 1981 he was given as part of this prize a major museum exhibition in Darmstadt.  One hundred and fifty paintings and a similar number of drawings and etchings were exhibited there, and a comprehensive catalogue of all his work to date was produced. 

In subsequent years Hector has had several successful one-man shows in Germany, Paris, Stuttgart, Belfast, Stockholm and Madrid, as well as many more in London and Ireland.  In 1986 McDonnell went to Hong Kong, where an exhibition was organised by a member of a leading local Chinese family.  He had already visited the East, journeying round China in 1979, and after the opening of the Hong Kong show he took himself off to Tibet and Pakistan.  Out of this experience came a series of etchings and drawings, which proved a very happy way of encapsulating his emotions, and both sets were subsequently published.  He was then invited to take part in another expedition to the far western parts of Tibet as the expedition's artist, and on his return produced a large number of carefully worked watercolours as well as publishing a book of drawings describing his West Tibetan experiences.  He still returns to Tibet regularly and in 2003, an exhibition of his most recent Tibetan paintings (entitled ‘Looking for Shangri-La’), were exhibited at the Berkeley Square Gallery in London.   Other foreign projects included a visit to war-torn Rwanda, again producing emotive etchings and sketchbooks of his experiences there.

Hector first began painting the cityscapes of New York about twenty years ago and he loved the city so much he decided to set up home there in 1998.  He met his current partner Wendy in New York and they and their children now divide their time between their homes in Antrim & New York.  On his return to New York immediately after the tragic events of September 11^th 2001, Hector began to paint Ground Zero and the surrounding streets, documenting both the physical change in the architecture and the way it affected the lives of ordinary New Yorkers.  Three years on, Hector’s latest exhibition is a poignant record of ‘post-911’ New York life.  Yet far from being melancholic, his paintings celebrate survival and resilience and prove that the vibrant, multicultural elements that make New York so special have certainly not disappeared.    

Born Belfast 1947

Educated at Eton and Oxford

Studied in Munich and Vienna 1965-1966

Winner of Darmstadter Kunstpreis 1979

Lives and works in London, Northern Ireland & New York

EXHIBITIONS

2006   Solomon Gallery, Dublin

2005   Galerie Valentien, Stuttgart, Dublin

2004   New York, Solomon Gallery, Dublin

2003   Looking for Shangri-La, Berkeley Square Gallery, London

          Retrospective, Ulster Museum, Belfast

2002   Pyms Gallery, London

2001   Galerie Netuschil, Darmstadt, Germany

2000   Bell Gallery, Belfast

1999   Solomon Gallery, Dublin

1998   Bell Gallery, Belfast

1997   Pyms Gallery, London

         Glucksman Ireland House, New York

1996   L’Imaginaire Irlandais, Galerie Vieille du Temple, Paris

1995   Galerie Netuschil, Darmstadt

         Solomon Gallery, Dublin

1994   Galerie Vieille du Temple, Paris

1993   Bell Gallery, Belfast

         Solomon Gallery, Dublin

1992   A Journey through Tibet, Bell Gallery, Belfast

         Galerie Stübler, Hanover

         A Journey through Tibet, Royal Academy, London

1991  Galeria Ynganzo, Madrid

         Sotheby's Stockholm

         Galerie Vieille du Temple, Paris

1990   Oeuvres sur Papier, Galerie Vieille du Temple, Paris

         Galerie Valentien, Stuttgart

1989   Kerlin Gallery, Belfast

         Coach House Gallery, Guernsey

         The Spirit of Turner, Agnew's London

1988   Fischer Fine Art, London

         Galerie Saint-Ouen, Jersey

         Galerie Vieille du Temple, Paris

1986   Fischer Fine Art, London

         Pacific Club, Hong Kong

1985   Royal Ulster Academy

1984   Grant Fine Art, Northern Ireland

         Wellesley Ashe, Dublin

1983   Galerie Valentien, Stuttgart

         Hof Galerie, Gschwendt

1982   Solomon Gallery, Dublin

1981   Hohenholer Kunstverein, Langenburg

         Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt, Kunstpreistrager

1980   Fischer Fine Art, London

         25 Jahre Kunstpreis der Stadt, Kunsthalle, Darmstadt

1979   Nouvelle Subjectivité, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels

          Sotheby Parke-Bernet GmbH, Munich

1978   Lad Lane Gallery, Dublin

Fischer Fine Art, London

1976   Galerie Ariadne, Vienna

          Nouvelle Subjectivité, Festival d'Automne, Paris & Lyon

1975   Fischer Fine Art, London

          Realismus and Realität, Kunsthalle, Darmstadt

          Bell Gallery, Belfast

1973   Hamet Gallery, London

SELECTED COLLECTIONS

Ulster Museum

Royal Ulster Academy

Arts Council of Northern Ireland

AIB Bank

Irish Life & Permanent plc

Irish Intercontinental Bank