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Neville Johnson (1911-1999)
The Family
Oil on board, 61 x 81cm (24 x 32”)
Signed, inscribed & dated ‘53 verso
Exhibited: “
Summer Exhibition”
, Victor Waddington Galleries, July 1953, Cat. No. 20;
International Hotel, Bray, 1954;
“A Celebration of Irish Modernism
”,The Ava Gallery, Clandeboye, June -
September 2011, Cat. No. 22; and
“
Gerard Dillon - Art and Friendships
” Exhibition, Adams, Dublin, July 2013 and
The Ava Gallery, Clandeboye, August 2013, Cat. No. 68
Literature: “
Irish Art and Modernism
” by Dr. S.B. Kennedy,p.139;
Baird’s Irish Price Index 1991, front cover illustration;
“One Hundred Years of Irish Art
”, by Eamon Mallic (Ed.) p.176, illustrated p.177; and
“
Gerard Dillon, Art and Friendships
”, illustrated p.80
€10,000 - 15,000
Painted in 1953, ‘
The Family
’ is one of a small series of work
in which Johnson used the subject of circus performers;
these other paintings are only know from contemporary
photographs that survived in the artist’s collection. In their
formal treatment and their mood these performers are
clearly inspired by Picasso, whose work Johnson had ad-
mired since first seeing it in Paris in 1936, rather than Jack
Yeats, who also used the narrative and symbolic qualities of
the circus in his work.
The highly abstracted and simplified depiction of the fig-
ures endows them with a sense of massiveness and volume
that ensures they still retain presence and identity. The
sophistication and skill of the painting is remarkable and
sets Johnson apart from his contemporaries in Ireland. He
maintains a tension between the flatness of the picture
surface and the illusion of depth, using small, repeated but
non-descriptive flat passages set against each other to sug-
gest recession, while the heavy surface, which appears to
have plaster or another element mixed into the oil, main-
tains its two-dimensionality. Within the limited palette,
colour is used to make visual connections throughout the
painting rather than in any naturalistic manner; for exam-
ple the strong blue of the boy’s shorts relates to the blue
triangle at the top of the small tent on the right of the com-
position.
‘
The Family
’ is very much a painting of its time. Keith
Vaughan, William Scott and Louis le Brocquy had all used
the family group to express the physical hardships and
metaphysical despair of the post-war era. Yeats had increas-
ingly seen the circus as representing the same alienation
and dispossession in its wandering, vulnerable life and it
also clearly has associations with the millions of starving
and homeless people who wandered across Europe in the
aftermath of the war, having been forced to leave behind
their way of life.
Johnson’s painting contains all these elements, but it also
has a grace and sense of nostalgia that enriches its mood
beyond simple angst. He lived very much as an outsider
and admired the life of people who used their skills and wit
to survive, without allowing themselves to be constrained
by the institutions of society. While it is sad that no other
paintings from this series appear to have survived to allow
us a clearer understanding of Johnson’s work and thinking
at this time, it does add to the significance of this work and
draws attention to his unusually complex reaction to events
and art in Europe.
Dickon Hall September 2013
