John Minton

(British, 1917-1957)

Jamaican market 50.8 x 60.9 cm. (20 x 24 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Private Collection, U.K.

In May 1950, John Minton wrote to Martyn Goff stating 'We leave England on September 9th by a banana boat for the West Indies for the winter at least; perhaps he said, with a faraway look, Forever. I shall totter like a decaying bastion of English culture, right out of Somerset Maugham, rum-soaked and crumpled from bar to bar trying to remember What It Was All About' (Frances Spalding, John Minton, Dance till the Stars Come Down, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2005, p.153). Minton returned to London in the December of the same year with a sizeable collection of drawings and watercolours (see lots 96 & 97) made during his Jamaican experience, which were used to work on oil paintings.

The present work is closely related to the slightly larger and important oil, Street Corner, Jamaica, in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art. Also painted in 1951, these two works both show a small group of young Jamaicans relaxing at night-time under fluorescent, electric lighting which illuminates the subjects as some engage with the viewer and others loaf around chatting. The same figure of a male stretching his arms within a door frame is visible at the left background of each work and in both examples the figures are placed in the direct foreground so we are immersed within the hustle and bustle of the Jamaican island.

Many of these pictures, quite possibly including Jamaican market, were exhibited at the Lefevre Gallery in 1951 and 1953. The shows were widely appreciated with the art critic John Berger writing that 'one senses Jamaica as a definite place in these pictures – the alternating dryness and dampness of the vegetation, the nights of unreal moonlight, the false animation of the people in the wooden cafes beneath Coca Cola advertisements and naked light bulbs – And at the same time one is aware of the painter's sympathy, of the validity of his human values.' (Op.Cit., p.155).