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46
48 Nevill Johnson ( 1911 - 1999)
A year of Grace (1945)
Oil on canvas, 25.5 x 35.5cm
Signed with monogram and dated
Exhibited:“Four Ulster Painters”Waddington Galler-
ies Dublin September 1947;“Four Ulster Painters”
Heals Gallery London May / June 1948
Armstrong’s association with the Boys
67
in London from 1957 marked an important
development in his career. Renting a flat above Dillon in Abbey Road, he was awarded
a travelling scholarship by CEMA in 1957. He stayed with the Campbells in Spain and
continued to travel to Malaga until the late 1970s. Campbell and Dillon introduced him to
the West of Ireland and he visited the area for the rest of his life. Although Armstrong ‘was
the quietest and least flamboyant of the group, more the listener than the talker’,
68
he was ‘a
crutch for George’
69
in the aftermath of Dillon’s death.
In 1947, Waddington organized two exhibitions, the first in Dublin, ‘Four Northern
Painters’, that included, Nevill Johnson, Campbell, Dillon and O’Neill, and another follow
up show in London at Heals Mansard Gallery the next year. Both were well reviewed. The
success of the exhibition in 1946, ‘Irish Art Exhibition’ at the Leicester Galleries, led Reeves
Levental, President of the Associated American Artists (AAA), to arrange an exhibition with
Dr Theodore Goodman
70
for New York. The exhibition, ‘Contemporary Irish Paintings’,
included Jack Butler Yeats, Louis Le Brocquy, Colin Middleton, Nano Reid, Norah
McGuinness, Campbell and Dillon. Several works were on loan from Abbott Laboratories,
which had just opened its first factory in Ireland. The exhibition opened in New York in
March 1947 and travelled to Chicago and Ottawa. The AAA also showed the group in their
new gallery in Beverly Hills, California, shortly afterwards.
Born in 1922, Holywood, Co. Down, Allen (Tate) Adams exhibited in a group show with
Campbell and Paul Nietsche in 1947 and later held a joint exhibition with Dillon with
CEMA, 1949, before making his home in Australia.
67
It is not clear how much contact Armstrong had with Daniel O’Neill after the 1950s.
68
Wesley Boyd, ‘Appreciation, Arthur Armstrong’,
The Irish Times
, 22 January 1996.
69
Conversation with Pierce McAuliffe, 8 January 2015.
70
Dr Theodore Goodman was the art critic for the Irish monthly magazine,
Commentary
.
fig.62: Catalogue, ‘Contempo-
rary Irish Painting’, USA, 1947,
Gerard Dillon cover image