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

and a strong reputation for his galleries in Belfast and Dublin. He filled a gap left by the
McClelland Gallery in Belfast, at a time when the Bell Gallery was the leading venue for
contemporary artists in Northern Ireland. Caldwell exhibited Johnson’s contemporaries from
Waddington days, such as Colin Middleton and George Campbell, as well as Tom Carr and
younger figures such as Basil Blackshaw and Patrick Collins. Johnson was a heavyweight addition
to this group, despite awareness of his work having dipped during the decade and a half when he
was absent from the Irish stage, and a series of solo exhibitions at Caldwell’s began to establish
him with a new generation of collectors.
Of this first solo exhibition in Northern Ireland or the Republic for over twenty years eight
paintings and nine drawings appear to have sold. Johnson, as ever, was interested in the details of
both purchaser and price. The acrylic paintings ranged in price from £150 to £600, with two
substantial drawings, Holy Hour and Two Figures Resting both under £100. Drawings, in a variety
of media, were priced between £50 and £100. The Arts Council bought four drawings, Tom Carr
purchased Evening Bird and the Ulster Museum acquired the large Summer Solstice, which
remains the only work by Johnson in the Ulster Museum collection, who have extensive holdings
of work by his contemporaries in Ireland.
Caldwell appears to have had great faith in Johnson, as well as some sympathy for his financial
situation perhaps, and purchased work outright from him before selling it. This might also explain
the artist’s subsequent interest in the prices that were charged. In 1978, he made £1,096 as an
artist, indicating some real success and progress, and this was maintained by regular cheques from
Tom Caldwell totalling £1,100 and a further £120 from the Arts Council.
Further success in the year of this first solo exhibition in Belfast came in the Silver Medal that
Johnson was awarded for his painting Still Life with White Jug at the annual Royal Ulster Academy
exhibition, the highest prize given to a non-academician. It appears to have been the first occasion
on which he had entered, his work having been put forward by Tom Caldwell, according to Helen
Falloon, then Honorary Secretary, who wrote to inform him of the good news. Practical and still
short of money, Johnson planned to sell this medal as an object of value, until he was informed
just in time that one was expected to return it to be passed on to the next recipient.
To complete this successful return to the two cities that had nurtured him as an artist, three
paintings by Nevill Johnson were shown in Dublin in November 1979 as part of an Exhibition of
Contemporary Irish Art, again included as one of a group of Caldwell artists. It is an intriguing
prospect to imagine artists such as Johnson, Middleton and le Brocquy exhibiting together again,
all once young stars in the Waddington firmament in Dublin, whose careers had taken such
different courses since then.
The fifty-five works in this 1978 exhibition have a gentle and occasionally bucolic mood,
certainly compared to the last painting exhibited in Dublin in the 1950s. They are a mixture of
82 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
Summer Solstice
Nevill Johnson l London 1978–1999 83