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

Then two happenings changed the course of his life. He met
and married Margaret Pettigrew-King (alias Jenny in The Other Side
of Six): “Notwithstanding the requirements of legitimacy and the
laws of property, I believed in divorce no more than I believed in
marriage. The oaths and the written bonds, the witnessed
registration of belonging, the receipts and waybills FOB, the licence
to copulate – these were repugnant to me, an affront to the honesty
of private declaration. We were married on a thundery afternoon at
the registry office at Eye, Norfolk. Clad in torn jeans and jungle
boots, I promised to cherish and protect, gaining thereby an oath
of loyalty from Jenny.”
He also inherited a little money with which he purchased four Margaret Pettigrew-King
cottages at Wilby Green, near Framlingham. “I had become a
squireen, lord and master of fourteen rooms, four front doors and four privies.” Here he found
solace and inspiration, in working the land and in communion with animals. He returned to
painting: “There followed a spring stunned with cold, and few birds left to greet it. Others
perished that year: Georges Braque, Robert Frost, Jean Cocteau. I lived on, hoeing, digging,
building and now painting again.”
During this period Johnson kept a diary, which unlike The Other Side of Six, is a very private
chronicle without editing for publication, and, as such, is all the more valuable in permitting
insight into the mind of the artist grappling with the artistic process, its joys and vicissitudes. The
proximity of nature, the seasons however harsh betimes, the soil and animals, dominant themes
in the diary, provide it would seem an ambience conducive to artistic expression, or at worst to
contemplating how best to go about painting. “Up at 7. The usual chore. Tea. Washingwater.
Make the fire. Strong west wind, cool, good promise. Kitten shit everywhere. Biddy not well.
“There was comfort and fun in the company of many friends who invaded the cottages at Wilby
knowing that a kindred spirit lay inside: “Constructed splendid cat walk for East window to bypass
painting table. Fully signed and directed.”It is interesting to see the artist instil into words
the colours and the nuances of the canvas: “Great skies. Thunder showers. Overpowering
cumulus. Great snowy-breasted goose galleons of clouds. Greens and blues electric, the barley
fear-pale.” Solitude was another boon though at times this weighed heavily: “There is too much
to enjoy alone. It is unbearable.”
At Wilby Johnson was able to indulge himself in reading and importantly to leave us some
record as to what moved him in literature. He may have seen much of self in the disillusioned and
exiled protagonist in Malcolm Lowry’s “compelling” novel Under the Volcano. He was also drawn
to books on gardening, house building and magic, especially the “fascinating” Conjuror’s
130 Nevill Johnson l Paint the Smell of Grass
Magazine of 1793 with a translation of Johann Caspar Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy designed to
promote the knowledge and the love of mankind, which had so fascinated Goethe and William Blake
among many contemporary intellectuals. And in the background philosophers, such as Henry
David Thoreau emerge from time to time: “A great cheerfulness have all great arts possessed,
almost a profane levity to such as understood them not. But their religion had a broader basis in
proportion as it was prominent. The clergy are as diseased, in as much possessed with a devil as the
reformers. They make their topic as offensive as the politician, for our religion is as impatient and
incommunicable as our poctrial vein, and to be approved with as much love and tenderness!”
Johnson was not much influenced by fellow artists but he did respect Robert MacBryde and
Robert Colquhoun of whom he wrote: “The local paper talks about McColquhoun the artist,
now showing (God help him, with the advanced demographers of Museum Street). And Mr
MacBryde. Don’t mind Robert can still draw. I’ve seen them. Don’t mind his company. OR his
friends. And don’t mind Picasso either.” Then on March 21st the Diary records: “ Robert is dead.
Collapsed & died in studio above museum gallery says East Anglian. Dear Jesus. Poor MacB.
Poor everyone.” Johnson, never one given to expressing emotion, was deeply upset by this event:
“Rang S’OB from the Crown - it’s true he’s dead. More need to live. To use the time. O Jesus.
I’m sad for him for him. This rare beautiful man. 47 for Gods sake. Idiot. Lovely man. Est is
Bandt.” And later: “I’m near to painting - nearer to Robert.” Other contemporaries in the art
world get scant if not derogatory mention: “Hockney (pop) shows at KASMIN. New Bond St
Print Centre. Holland Street. W.8” And Anne Yeats who had trudged behind Nevill and his Leica
in Dublin and who journeyed loyally to Wilby receives the following: “Anne Yeats entrained at
Diss at 12.45. Nice, nice woman, but doglike. Mean of me, but so much to do - and so much
treacle. Each way I even look, she looks. Like a mirror, and I’m not that pretty now.”
Much of the Wilby diary is devoted to painting, or rather the difficulty Johnson had in
bringing himself to paint. Lack of the means whereby to exist is a constant thread in Johnson’s
life: “It is not just the sheer indignity of poverty. It inhibits and desensitizes. Wastes such precious
time. Months of scratching instead of painting. It’s really sordid and angry-making. So I’m
supposed to be decorating a house this weekend. And panels waiting. And waiting for Alf who
waits for his money. And uncertain I am about the club/studio in Hertart St – all because of £4
a week. So I jump and take it and get working.” Johnson never shied from menial work, if for no
other reason that he often had no alternative: “Alf offers £2 a week – and a daily meal if I lock
myself in. He really means this. The arm still fairly useless but signed off the sick & onto the
labour. Offered work as messenger or parking meter attendant! No benefits, 20 years of
contribution of no avail. Finished painting for Johnson. Minimal existence possibility, but I will
dig in regardless.”Procrastination dominates the Wilby diaries. Tomorrow will be fine for painting
but not today. “So much I owe in work and time. Surely I can break through these paper bags &
A Personal Memoir l Eoin O’Brien 131