Frank Johnson, "Acclaimed Artist"

Browsing through the GW Railwayana Auction catalogue prior to their 25 July 2015 sale, my attention was drawn to a group of six original paintings by Frank Johnson which were to be offered in successive lots. This was not a name I knew, and I presumed that it was likely, therefore, that Frank was not known primarily as a railway artist, but someone who had dipped into the railway arena for a relatively short time.

Born in Leicester, Frank Johnson, 1917-1998, was a commercial and portrait artist who taught at Bradford Regional College of Art from 1952 up to his retirement in 1980. David Hockney was one of his students. Celebrating 175 years of its existence, Bradford College’s online website described Frank Johnson’s portraits as tender, compassionate and sensitive. He specialised in pictures of people in their working environment, as was shown on the BBC’s “Your Paintings” website that show-cased 17 such examples.

During his lifetime, Frank exhibited his work at the Royal Academy, Bradford City Art Gallery, the Huddersfield Sports Centre Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art at Skopje, in the then Yugoslavia. Today, his paintings are in public collections at galleries in Bradford, Leeds and Glasgow. His work is said to have been influenced by Walter Sickert and the Euston Road School [1937-9], emphasising naturalism and realism. This style has also been described as being part of the “Kitchen Sink” art movement.    

The Pershore examples clearly managed to convey the importance of workers in blue overalls to the British Railways scene. Though railway artists do include personnel in their paintings to a greater or lesser extent, they tend not to let their figures get in the way of the locomotives, much in the same way as railway photographers, who will sometimes wait for ages for people to vacate their field of view. I’ve noticed that they can get quite steamed up themselves in the process.   

I like these paintings. The larger than life facial features, the washed out, creased blue overalls, the grease top and other flat hats and the general bustle, all remind me of the sheer number of employees that there were in those places. Crewe Works was teeming with men when our crocodile of fresh-faced youngsters in school uniform threaded its way through the various shops, as we frantically wrote down numbers as though our lives depended on it, at the same time trying to avoid falling into the pits between the rails or snagging our shorts on protruding pieces of metal.  

There is certainly attention to detail in these pictures and the locomotives themselves are fairly convincingly replicated by someone who probably did not necessarily see himself as a “train man” in the same way that we perhaps like to think that we are as lifelong devotees. Having said that, my own photograph of A2 Class No.60537 Batchelor’s Button on Carlisle Canal shed taken in August 1962, shows the smokebox door number plate as being below the hand rail, not above it. The mistaken labelling of Britannia Class No. 70022 Tornado as Venus [which was 70023] might be an indication that the artist was operating a bit outside of his comfort zone when it came to railways.

These six paintings were sold at a fine art auction in May 2013 as one combined lot, for £600 [£750, including buyer’s premium]. According to a regional newspaper article dated 13 June 2013, the group had been secured by a provincial art gallery. Information available on internet link pages indicated that at least three of them - and presumably therefore all six - had price tags there of £1,500 each. Prior to Pershore, the gallery’s own website showed the images as sold but did not reveal for how much.

So how does an artist like Frank Johnson achieve “acclaimed” status? Who is doing the acclaiming and with what justification? I asked two friends who are fine art graduates and who work in design for a living. They were quite scathing about the use of the word “acclaimed” in these circumstances. “Would it happen in the world of science? It’s a common ploy to dress things up. I could similarly claim to have work in private collections and permanent collections in the UK and abroad.” I took the point.

“Acclaimed” scientists don’t have to be so described because their achievements largely speak for themselves and are, to a degree, measurable. Their ideas and contributions may be widely accepted by their peers and their work could have led to practical applications that served to prove the point. Art is so much more subjective. To place a painting in an exhibition only indicates that you have managed to persuade someone to give it house room for a time. That is not necessarily a big ask and presumably may not be free from inducements.

It would be easy to get very cynical about all this. Perhaps David Hockney didn’t rate his teacher too highly. Surely, “acclaimed” in this context means other practitioners of repute have agreed that this is work of high quality? In praising the work of another they would also then be putting their own reputation on the line. Mind you, you would have to expect that the Royal Academy were going to be a bit picky about who they gave wall space to, at any time. On Bradford College’s alumni website, one of Frank Johnson’s former pupils described him as “very inspirational” and the “biggest influence” on them all. They liked the fact that he was not just a teacher but a practising artist who was prepared to work on his own paintings in front of them. The implication was that some other art teachers had already “hung up their brushes” by that stage. 

In a brief exchange with one of the galleries where Frank Johnson’s work had previously been exhibited, I was told that GWRA had received a lot of interest in the forthcoming sale of this tranche of paintings. That’s a shame, I thought, as my prospects of being able to afford one took an immediate and possibly irremediable nose dive.

At the auction, I managed a close-up peek at the lots before bidding began. The pictures all seemed to be a bit dark, just as they had appeared to be in both the paper and the online versions of the catalogue. Most had been laid out flat on a table in an even darker corner of the viewing space, at other times of the year better known as the stage in the school hall, so they were hardly shown off at their best.

One or two potential punters were admiring them and a couple of others surmised about what figures they might reach, in their capacity as unknown quantities. After the fairly lengthy blurb that had been offered for them in the catalogue, the auctioneer chose not to talk them up any further when the moment came.

Three went for £200, one for £250 and two failed to sell. What a damp squib they had turned out to be. I suddenly felt a bit sorry for Frank Johnson, or rather, I felt relieved that he is not around to have to face the ignominy of such widespread rejection. There was very little interest in his work from the railwayana fraternity on the day. Soon after the auction, the two unsold paintings were available for purchase from GWRA at a reserve price of £300.

Acclamation seemed a world away. In fact, Frank hit such a wall of disinterest and it was so quiet in the hall that for a moment I thought everyone else had simply upped sticks and gone down to the pub. You can take some hammer blows as an artist – almost literally, in this case - if you dare to subject your best efforts to the hard-nosed arena that is the auction. This is not quite the same thing as the usual dealing in anonymously cast pieces of metal that we are more used to. You are putting a part of you on the line. It could end up being quite a painful experience, though Frank Johnson himself has at least been spared that. People are voting for you on a very personal basis by risking their hard-earned cash. I quite admire the few, including Joe Townend, who are prepared to risk it - and with some success in his case, it should be said.

My advice to other would-be railway artists is not to put people in front of the engines. We railway folk tend not to go for that. Our relationship, such as it is, is primarily with the locomotive. That is not to say that the setting is not important. It needs to be convincing and it could well, therefore, include railway employees, bystanders and the travelling public. Just don’t let them get in the way too much.

What have I learnt myself from the experience? That I don’t know a lot about art? Maybe, but I’m making an effort to find out a bit more. Would these images fare better on another day, in another place? I doubt it, and now there is a precedent that will only serve to confirm prevalent attitudes should they surface again. They are likely to be seen as two hundred pound pictures - just about. That means they barely warrant comparison with the acknowledged masters of the genre. Rob Rowland, Artist and Illustrator - and not just of trains - and someone whose work certainly does command respect, was manning his own stall in a side room at the same event while all this was going on.

Anyway, I’m not too despondent, because, as you might have guessed, I now have my own reminder of Crewe Works in the early 1960’s, showing a locomotive that I saw “in the flesh” many times, in a place that I loved to visit. The picture takes me back. I can feel the atmosphere. I am staring intently at the string of green namers, inhaling the smells and listening to the voices - the banter and all the ribbing that was going on there over half a century ago. My prompt for this is an original oil painting by a “competent artist” and it was only a couple of hundred quid. Thanks, Frank. RIP.