Nevill Johnson: Paint the smell of grass - Eoin O'Brien

geometric stylization, deliberate artificiality and dramatic use of perspective to create space within
the picture are quite different, and closer to Edward Wadsworth, whose work Johnson almost
certainly saw in London in 1936. They also indicate an interest in cubism, particularly The
Fortune Teller, with its faceted planes, but as with many artists such as Metzinger and le
Fauconnier, they do not analyse and restructure the image in any depth, but adapt a still
representational object in an illusionistic space using a superficially geometric manner. The 1950s
were to see Johnson use his study of cubism to break down pictorial space and his use of collage
reveals a thorough grasp of the innovations of Picasso and Braque.
In subject matter, too, these three paintings are unusual and they demonstrate three areas that
Johnson continued to explore in his work. His love of cities, particularly Dublin, was balanced by
an anger at the social injustice that was so evident and the destructive nature of urban life, seen
most dramatically in his photography of the early 1960s. The Fortune Teller shows the wit that
comes through so strongly in Johnson’s work, but ideas of magic and its redemptive and
regenerative power remain as a strong element in his work of the post-war era. Finally, the rather
barren scene at Kilkeel, stripped of the people one would expect to see there, prefigures the
ravaged apocalyptic wastelands that dominate Johnson’s work until the 1960s. Johnson writes of
memories of a family picnic at Kilkeel on the day that Hiroshima was bombed, in his
autobiography, contrasting the idyllic peace of family life in County Down with the potential evil
of mankind and the horror of global events. All these works demonstrate Johnson’s use of
dramatic perspective, and this was almost an obsession in his early studies as an artist, working
from books until he had the control evident in all these works.
Shipyard, Kilkeel was exhibited in 1944 at the ‘Annual Exhibition of the Arts and Crafts’
sponsored by the Belfast feis, on loan from Mr and Mrs J.W. Lutton, the first record we have of
Nevill Johnson exhibiting work. The fact of it being on loan suggests that it might have been a
commission, as was another of the earliest extant examples of Johnson’s work, Linenscape. This
tempera painting is an imaginatively surreal rendering of the local shoreline, placed along it the
individual parts of the mechanism of the linen looms which had contributed so greatly to the
economic prosperity of Ulster and which, ironically, could not have failed to remind Johnson of
the source of his own family’s fortune. The cliffs and mountains of the north Antrim coastline in
the distance are draped with crisp linen. Its clean, high-pitched colours, tightly-finished surface
and cleverly arranged composition are all likely to have drawn something from Johnson’s
friendship with Luke, but Linenscape is a complete and individual work. It uses the inventive
freedom which surrealism bestowed on this next generation of artists without simply borrowing
its imagery and jokes. It also demonstrates an interest in mechanics; Johnson’s desire to
understand how machines worked led to a number of later inventions which the artist patented.
This enlightened commission perhaps hints at Nevill Johnson’s charm and his understanding of
16 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
Kilkeel Shipyard
Nevill Johnson l The Belfast years 1934–1946 17