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拍品專文
In 1943 John Minton was released from the army on the grounds of ill health. Soon afterwards he obtained a job teaching drawing at Camberwell School of Art. He also began lodging with Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun in a block of studios at 77 Bedford Gardens in Kensington. In this same block was the Polish painter and print-maker Jankel Adler, who had formerly enjoyed friendship with Paul Klee and contact with Picasso, and whose work upheld aspects of Continental Modernism. The present work appears to date from the summer of 1944, when he went to Cornwall, taking with him awareness of the exchange of artistic ideas then being shared between the two Roberts and Adler in the Bedford Gardens studios. Minton’s work at this time was dominated by landscape and the perturbation and melancholy caused by war.
Following an invitation from the poet Sydney Graham and his partner Nessie Dunsmuir, Minton joined them at Germoe, where all three lived in two caravans for six weeks, within sight of the sea. The fact that Minton was much of the time in the company of Graham and Dunsmuir suggests that they may be the source for the couple in this drawing. Minton often included figures in his landscapes at this time, but almost never makes mention of them in the titles of his pictures. Yet they charge his romantic landscapes with additional resonance, pointing up a sense of violence and danger in nature as well as the possibility of it providing a haven of peace. What is surprising in this drawing is the degree to which Colquhoun and MacBryde, and possibly Wyndham Lewis, have influenced Minton‘s use of distortion in the drawing of the figures, especially their faces, which are very unlike the faces of the children in Minton’s 1945 oil painting, Children by the Sea (Tate), where the influence of Adler is much more to the fore.
In the autumn of 1944, Minton shared an exhibition with Colquhoun and MacBryde at the Lefevre Gallery in Bond Street. More weight was given to the two Roberts, both of whom exhibited oils whereas Minton was confined to gouaches and drawings. Nevertheless the exhibition contained some of Minton’s powerfully elaborate neo-romantic pen-and-ink drawings, including Recollections of Wales, now in the British Council Collection, and Surrey Landscape, now in the Arts Council Collection. Among the items listed under Minton’s name are works titled Cornish Landscape, The Headland, and The Summer Day, making it possible that one of these could be the title of this current drawing. But there is no doubting the fact that the success of this exhibition established Minton’s reputation and explains why he was offered not one but two one-man exhibitions the following year.
We are very grateful to Frances Spalding for preparing this catalogue entry.
Following an invitation from the poet Sydney Graham and his partner Nessie Dunsmuir, Minton joined them at Germoe, where all three lived in two caravans for six weeks, within sight of the sea. The fact that Minton was much of the time in the company of Graham and Dunsmuir suggests that they may be the source for the couple in this drawing. Minton often included figures in his landscapes at this time, but almost never makes mention of them in the titles of his pictures. Yet they charge his romantic landscapes with additional resonance, pointing up a sense of violence and danger in nature as well as the possibility of it providing a haven of peace. What is surprising in this drawing is the degree to which Colquhoun and MacBryde, and possibly Wyndham Lewis, have influenced Minton‘s use of distortion in the drawing of the figures, especially their faces, which are very unlike the faces of the children in Minton’s 1945 oil painting, Children by the Sea (Tate), where the influence of Adler is much more to the fore.
In the autumn of 1944, Minton shared an exhibition with Colquhoun and MacBryde at the Lefevre Gallery in Bond Street. More weight was given to the two Roberts, both of whom exhibited oils whereas Minton was confined to gouaches and drawings. Nevertheless the exhibition contained some of Minton’s powerfully elaborate neo-romantic pen-and-ink drawings, including Recollections of Wales, now in the British Council Collection, and Surrey Landscape, now in the Arts Council Collection. Among the items listed under Minton’s name are works titled Cornish Landscape, The Headland, and The Summer Day, making it possible that one of these could be the title of this current drawing. But there is no doubting the fact that the success of this exhibition established Minton’s reputation and explains why he was offered not one but two one-man exhibitions the following year.
We are very grateful to Frances Spalding for preparing this catalogue entry.