The third almost suggests collage, which <strong>Johnson</strong> does not seem to have used until <strong>the</strong> 1970s. They both suggest illusion and destroy it. Stones and shells seem to sit on a ledge but also are placed on o<strong>the</strong>r planes that shift our perceptions <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> space. The sky in ano<strong>the</strong>r work <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> time, Monkstown Whorl, is pulled apart as if it were a piece <strong>of</strong> material, for <strong>the</strong> sun to shine through. The pr<strong>of</strong>essional progress which <strong>Nevill</strong> <strong>Johnson</strong> had made in <strong>the</strong> years he had spent so far in Dublin was remarkable. Much <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> work he exhibited well into his time in Dublin was probably painted in Ulster, or at <strong>the</strong> time he moved south, but <strong>the</strong>re had by 1950 been a striking shift towards a more formally complex and intellectually ambitious manner <strong>of</strong> painting, which <strong>the</strong>n dominated <strong>the</strong> increasingly dark paintings <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> 1950s. His standing amongst <strong>the</strong> Dublin art world was rising and <strong>the</strong> critic <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Dublin Magazine wrote <strong>of</strong> his 1952 exhibition that it “shows such phenomenal development since his one-man show <strong>of</strong> last year that…I feel that <strong>Johnson</strong> can be numbered amongst that first half-dozen important modern painters in <strong>the</strong> country at <strong>the</strong> moment. “I am not suggesting that his line <strong>of</strong> development has changed: he is still concerned with <strong>the</strong> creation <strong>of</strong> a personal symbolism. But whereas formerly his detachment, expressed through an extreme austerity in execution, deprived his work <strong>of</strong> depth, a considerable proportion <strong>of</strong> his more recent pictures show him to be a painter not only <strong>of</strong> imagination, but <strong>of</strong> feeling. In o<strong>the</strong>r words his intellectualism has become fused with emotion and his imagination tempered with feeling. A picture like Harlequin or À la Recherche, though basically formal creations, contains at <strong>the</strong> same time an element <strong>of</strong> poetry which raise <strong>the</strong>m far above <strong>the</strong> limitations <strong>of</strong> abstraction. They are satisfying, not merely architecturally, but emotionally. Lot’s Wife, though nearer to abstraction, has an impressive dignity <strong>of</strong> form. Some <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> less ambitious pictures, <strong>the</strong> gay and strongly-coloured King, or <strong>the</strong> direct and simple Cat, show <strong>Johnson</strong>’s newly acquired freedom in his approach to paint.” It is revealing that <strong>the</strong> most observant and acute writing on <strong>Johnson</strong>’s work dates from this period in Dublin. <strong>Johnson</strong> always recalled his life in Dublin with pleasure, “day to day living passed unhurried, inexpensive, and a light-footed sanity prevailed.” His success with Waddington’s and at <strong>the</strong> Irish Exhibition <strong>of</strong> Living Art was increased by high pr<strong>of</strong>ile London exhibitions such as that arranged by Waddington at Heal’s and particularly at Arthur Tooth and Sons, a gallery which exhibited contemporary British artists, such as Henry Moore, as well as nineteenth century European painters. In hindsight it prefigures Waddington’s interest in <strong>the</strong> wider market for paintings outside Ireland, but it must have promised much for his Ulster artists too. <strong>Johnson</strong>’s work was also included in an exhibition, Contemporary Ulster <strong>Paint</strong>ings held in Edinburgh in 1951 by <strong>the</strong> Scottish Committee <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Arts Council. He was represented by <strong>the</strong> painting bought by Zoltan Lewinter Frankl and most <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> exhibition was indeed drawn from this remarkable and wide-ranging collection. In moving to Dublin, <strong>Johnson</strong> to a degree abandoned <strong>the</strong> middle classes and <strong>the</strong> concomitant security, and found a world <strong>of</strong> outsiders with whom he felt a sense <strong>of</strong> liberation. As he wrote, 40 <strong>Nevill</strong> <strong>Johnson</strong> l <strong>Paint</strong> <strong>the</strong> Smell <strong>of</strong> Grass Still Life with Falling Leaves “There existed a fair degree <strong>of</strong> inequality in Dublin in <strong>the</strong> fifties. The poor remained poor, observing <strong>the</strong>ir stations; secure in <strong>the</strong> knowledge that poverty lay ahead, well-defined.” He recalls a small and dingy bar in Dublin where he was first treated with suspicion and gradually accepted in a strange euphoria <strong>of</strong> sympathy and solidarity. In having no obligations, perhaps, <strong>Johnson</strong> could choose friends according to his own conscience, and it seems likely that alongside his anger is a sense <strong>of</strong> guilt at having been part <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> class <strong>of</strong> <strong>of</strong>ficers, politicians and businessmen who held <strong>the</strong>mselves apart from <strong>the</strong> underclasses <strong>the</strong>y had helped to create. In this we can perhaps see <strong>the</strong> starting point for one <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> most remarkable <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> many diverse projects <strong>Johnson</strong> pursued throughout his life. It was probably in 1952 that he began to photograph on a systematic basis <strong>the</strong> Dublin he later described as The People’s City. It was a city <strong>of</strong> slums decayed from Georgian grandeur, <strong>of</strong> a freewheeling spirit that just survived <strong>the</strong> poverty, disease and lack <strong>of</strong> opportunities that was all it <strong>of</strong>fered <strong>the</strong> inhabitants <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> areas that <strong>Johnson</strong> visited. It was a city <strong>of</strong> markets, carts and pubs that seemed to have avoided <strong>the</strong> mechanisation that had irrevocably altered o<strong>the</strong>r European cities, that almost recalled <strong>the</strong> Paris Ernest Hemingway had written <strong>of</strong> almost half a century earlier. It was also a city dominated by <strong>the</strong> <strong>Nevill</strong> <strong>Johnson</strong> l The Dublin years 1947–1958 41
42 <strong>Nevill</strong> <strong>Johnson</strong> l <strong>Paint</strong> <strong>the</strong> Smell <strong>of</strong> Grass Bird The Cottage <strong>Nevill</strong> <strong>Johnson</strong> l The Dublin years 1947–1958 43