137
Important Irish Art
,
wednesday 4th December 2013 at 6pm
91
Nevill Johnson (1911-1999)
Bird
Oil on board, 45.5 x 61cm (18 x 24”)
Signed
Provenance: Sold in these rooms, Important Irish Art Sale March 2007 Lot 131, where purchased by the current owner
Exhibited:
The Artists of Ireland
Exhibition, Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, USA, where purchased by Mrs. Marten.This exhibition was organised by the
Cultural Relations Committee of Ireland
Literature : ‘Nevill Johnson – Paint the Smell of Grass’, Dickon Hall, 2008 Full page Illustration P42
While Nevill Johnson’s work of the late 1940s and 1950s, when he was living in Dublin, usually deals with serious subjects and often has a dark tone,
Bird
belongs to one of the most elegantly witty and detached groups of paintings he made at this time. Painted from a bird Johnson constructed from paper and
addressing themes of illusion and reality, as in Cocotte, Johnson places his creation in a landscape where it becomes the dramatic focus.
Bird
was exhibited
in Pasadena as part of the touring exhibitions Victor Waddington organised across the USA. Johnson’s work of this period is rare as many of his paintings
were sold in these exhibitions or through Tooth’s in London and they have remained outside Ireland.
€4,000 - 6,000
