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

too, is Johnson as homo ludens, taking
a child’s game and allowing it to
dominate a landscape and endowing it
with a biomorphic relationship to the
moon that just fits within the picture
space.
This increasingly individual and
controlled voice is consistently present
in the seven paintings Johnson included
in ‘Five Irish Painters’ at the Tooth
Gallery in London in the summer of
1951. Paintings such as Toi et Moi, En
Passant and La Durance have a more
House by the Canal
sophisticated treatment of pictorial
space which becomes more obvious in the 1950s. The first two of these paintings are simple and
elegant suggestions of absence and allow us to imagine the human relationships at which they
hint.
An extremely difficult family holiday to the south of France in 1949 or 1950, camping near
the River Durance appears to have inspired a number of these paintings. His marriage broke down
at this time and he travelled home alone. The single figure waiting on the empty station platform
of En Passant, the two empty chairs in Toi et Moi that face away from each other while two trees
in the distance stand close together, as well as the barren and stony river bed of La Durance, all
suggest the isolation and torment of this period of Johnson’s life.
36 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
En Passant
Toi et Moi
La Durance
Nevill Johnson l The Dublin years 1947–1958 37