John Minton's 'Cornish Mining Village'

Liberty Grey

Minton spent six weeks in Germoe, near Penzance, with the Scotsman W.S. Graham and his girlfriend Nessie Dunsmuir during the summer of 1944. Germoe provided a welcome release from London for Minton and 'he passed his days swimming, drawing, fishing, lying in the sun and getting drunk in the evenings' (Frances Spalding, John Minton, Dance Till The Stars Come Down, Lund Humphries, London, 2005, p.76).

Cornwall and its landscape held a special place in Minton's heart and he began to exhibit work at the Lefevre Gallery from the autumn of 1944. The present work has much in common with other pictures of the period such as Children by the Sea and Children of the Gorbals, both also executed in 1945. Stylistically one can see the influence of Jankel Adler, particularly in the figure in the foreground on the right. Adler had a studio in the same block in Bedford Gardens, where Minton lived for a short period with Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde.

Thanks to Bonhams

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