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

form of surrealism with echoes of Salvador Dali, but it eschews Dali’s excessive theatricality and
the painting has a detached and almost classical treatment that is a hallmark of Johnson’s very
particular voice. The stripped-down vocabulary of Johnson’s surrealist language reveals the
sophistication of his visual intelligence even at this early stage of his career as a professional artist.
Despite occasional false dawns surrealism in Ireland never really developed into a coherent
movement. John Luke’s interest lay always in the Renaissance, Basil Rakoczi’s work contains
elements of magic and the irrational and Patrick Hennessy’s intense realism occasionally touches
the surreal without any apparently consistent interest in this direction. Colin Middleton
described himself as “the only surrealist painter working in Ireland”, and he also owed much to
Dali and de Chirico in the late 1930s and early 1940s, but while he too adds some of his own
touches to this rather generic surrealist manner, Middleton seems to be more caught up within
the style, which forms part of his early experimentation with a number of modernist styles.
Johnson, however, while he is influenced by the styles and narrative of surrealism, has a distinct
voice which has adapted aspects of surrealism at this time for its most coherent expression. One
could find the aspects in some paintings by Johnson from the early 1940s; Linenscape, Byrne’s
Pub, Kilkeel Shipyard, Mater Dolorosa, A Voice Crying, all show a clear line of development.
The artist’s feeling of being set outside and against the established view of things has found
an appropriate style and as his vision clarifies this style is honed towards the pared down and
elegant paintings of the late 1940s. It is a surrealism that has the quality of wit which H.R.F.
Keating noted, writing in ‘Icarus’ in 1952, but whose strangeness increasingly suggests isolation
and danger.
Europe 1945 is a painting from the same mould as Keys. It was exhibited as Europe 1948 in his
1950 exhibition, but Johnson’s own photograph of the painting records it with the former title,
which also seems to clarify its meaning. Skeletal lizard driftwood crawls along a barren plain
beneath post-atomic clouds. A road sign, where there are no roads left, is both a reminder of the
human civilisation that seems to have vanished and also a signifier of the human figure. This
standing form is a mockery of our dehumanised culture, but all that remains of it.
The most dramatic of the paintings of this period is probably Crucifixion, painted in 1946,
which Johnson exhibited at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1949. Already in 1949,
Waddington’s group of Ulster painters have begun to dominate the Irish Exhibition of Living Art,
Dublin’s avant-garde academy. O’Neill, Campbell, Middleton and Dillon also showed works, in
some cases more than one, and it is interesting that they are in general the most expensive works
for sale. Crucifixion is priced at £47-10. O’Neill’s Nude with Blue Skirt, now in the collection of
the Ulster Museum, was £55 and Middleton’s Woman with Roses, £52-10.
The respected Dublin critic Edward Sheehy considered Crucifixion Johnson’s “most
impressive picture yet”. We seem to be watching from behind a human-like figure on a cross; it
32 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
Europe
Nevill Johnson l The Dublin years 1947–1958 33