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

exhibited them above all in the 1970s and their visual sophistication and control of effect was
often held in balance by a daring and wit that perhaps best expresses Nevill Johnson’s personality
as a mature artist.
As with photography and collage, printmaking revealed Johnson’s willingness to work hard at
a new medium, as well as his eventual ease with these acquired skills. A series of monotypes from
around 1965, of landscapes peopled with acrobats, looks back to the circus families and travellers
of the 1950s in their subject, but they treat the figures in terms of an arrangement of abstract
forms that have a close formal relationship to the landscape around them. While there remains an
element of the pathos of the earlier paintings, these works also introduce the humour that is to
be increasingly present in Johnson’s paintings and drawings. His tentative return to confidence as
a painter is surprising as these monotypes and the etchings Johnson made in the same period
(work which alone would establish him as an artist of note) indicates a clear and confident
establishment of a change in the mood and style of his work. The application of this painting style,
however, can only be fully judged by Johnson’s first exhibition held after this long break from
showing publicly.
It is interesting that on at least two occasions in the 1960s, Johnson continued to exhibit work
in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art. He included three paintings in 1966, including Red
Landscape and Morning Figure, and two in 1968, Foliation and No Title. His contact address is
given c/o the Dawson Gallery, a continuation of the Waddington Gallery insofar as it was run by
Leo Smith, who had worked for Victor Waddington, and then taken over by Smith’s assistant,
John Taylor. This does contradict suggestions by Johnson that he did not exhibit during his
period of ‘reappraisal’ and it is also interesting that having looked seriously at the gallery scene in
London, he still preferred to exhibit in Dublin. Here there was undoubtedly still interest and
familiarity with his work, but it is unlike Johnson to keep a foot in a safe camp. As none of these
works are illustrated it is difficult to know in what manner he was then working, but one small
surviving painting from this time suggests a much more pared down and more abstract style.
His first one-man exhibition for probably fifteen years took place in December 1970 at the
Collector’s Gallery on the Portobello Road in west London, not far from where Johnson was
living at that time. It was successful and the artist’s ledgers record various sales, some to friends,
but a number to new collectors. This group of thirty-one paintings looks forward to the next
three decades of exhibitions in a number of ways. Most obviously, all the larger paintings are in
acrylic. While there are references to London (Holland Park Encounter, Communication in
Kensington Gardens) the time spent in Wilby has brought a gentler tone to many of the titles.
Siesta, Landscape with Cows, Country House, Landscape with Birds, Figure in Autumn Landscape.
Whereas before the landscape was scarred by atomic explosions and conflict between humans, it
now provides an escape from human activity. Living and working in the Suffolk countryside,
66 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
Morning Figure
Nevill Johnson l Wilby and after 1959–1977 67