Nevill Johnson

Nevill Johnson was an English born artist, who moved to Ireland in the 1930's, living in both Belfast and Dublin. In addition to his contribution to modern Irish art, he was also an accomplished writer, photographer and film maker. Having seen the work of Picasso and other cubist painters in Paris for the first time in 1936, he came under their influence. As a painter, he had no formal training, but worked with the Irish artist John Luke in Belfast in the 1930's. He achieved success in the 1940's when his work was shown at the Victor Waddington Gallery in Dublin alongside other notable Irish artists, such as Jack Butler Yeats, Louis le Brocquy, Gerard Dillon and Colin Middleton.

In 1952, Johnson received a small grant from the Arts Council that enabled him to buy a second-hand Leica. Armed with his camera, and accompanied by Anne Yeats, Johnson began work on a series of photographs of the people and places of the “real” Dublin of that time. This photographic tour of Dublin resulted in a publication of Johnson’s photographs in 1981 – Dublin: The People’s City.