signed and dated ‘John Minton 1949’ (lower left); signed again and inscribed on the canvas overlap ‘TWO FISHERMEN (OIL) JOHN MINTON’
Further information »
Two Fishermen, 1949
Exhibition History:
London, Royal Academy, 1949 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, no. 692);
Hastings, Jerwood Gallery, Century: 100 Modern British Artists, 23 October 2016 – 8 January 2017;
London, Business Design Centre, London Art Fair Museum Partner, Ten Years – A Century of Art, 18 – 22 January 2017;
Woking, The Lightbox, John Minton and the Romantic Tradition, 28 January 2017 – 9 March 2017;
Hull, Ferens Art Gallery, Reflection: British Art in an Age of Change, 17 August 2019 – 5 January 2020;
Woking, The Lightbox, Collector’s Favourites (online exhibition), 1 June – 1 September 2020
‘Every living person has certain feelings about the world around him,’ said John Minton in 1949, the year of this painting. He believed these feelings, ‘common to all men’ to be ‘the raw materials of the artist’s inspiration’ and the job of the artist to ‘translate’ them. In the process of translating, the painter uses the visual language of painting – arrangements of shapes, lines and colours – to ‘convey the idea or the emotion which moved him to paint this particular picture.’ In this sense, then, could we say that every painting is a self-portrait?
