Skip to main content

This auction has ended. View lot details

You may also be interested in

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

John Minton (British, 1917-1957) Hop-Pickers 28 x 38.1 cm. (11 x 15 in.) image 1
John Minton (British, 1917-1957) Hop-Pickers 28 x 38.1 cm. (11 x 15 in.) image 2
John Minton (British, 1917-1957) Hop-Pickers 28 x 38.1 cm. (11 x 15 in.) image 3
John Minton (British, 1917-1957) Hop-Pickers 28 x 38.1 cm. (11 x 15 in.) image 4
Lot 11*,AR

John Minton
(British, 1917-1957)
Hop-Pickers 28 x 38.1 cm. (11 x 15 in.)

18 June 2025, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £44,800 inc. premium

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our Modern British & Irish Art specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Ask about this lot

John Minton (British, 1917-1957)

Hop-Pickers
signed and dated 'John Minton 1945' (lower left)
watercolour, gouache, pastel and pen and ink
28 x 38.1 cm. (11 x 15 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
Private Collection, Ireland, since the 1960s

Minton's Hop-Pickers is a superb example of the wave of Neo-Romanticism that came with force in the 1940s, and illustrates well how this new generation built on – and broke away from – the foremost initial influence, Graham Sutherland. Executed in 1945, on the eve of a bitterly longed-for peace in Europe, it captures Minton's quite particular atmospheric style of a bitter-sweet appreciation of the ephemerality of nature and of beauty. The harvest is an especially suitable motif in this regard: the brief flowering, the yielding of fruit to be worked for and savoured, before the retreat into winter.

Hop-Pickers came with a twin, currently in The Ingram Collection, The Hop Pickers (1945). Of the same size and medium, where the present work depicts three women seated, finely separating the bunches of hops, the sister picture depicts the previous stage; three men, one up a ladder, removing the bunches from the plant itself. Both employ an engaging dynamic between a somewhat flattened picture plane given depth by the loosely implied, receding vines. The vines are particularly archetypal in brushwork of Neo-Romanticism, but the flat blocks that layer the ground signify a departure from Minton's influences.

Living with Glasgow born Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun at this point, Minton would move in with Keith Vaughan the following year, and they would have a mutual impact on each other's artistic development. The harvest was a subject that Vaughan would replicate several times in the next two or three years, notably in Climbing Figures (1946, Private Collection), perhaps the most reminiscent of the present work in it's general arrangement and depiction of the human figure, In the Orchard (1946, Private Collection) and Man Gathering Fruit (1948, Private Collection).

Additional information

Bid now on these items

Laurence Stephen Lowry R.A.(British, 1887-1976)Five Figures 26.5 x 18.2 cm. (10 3/8 x 7 1/4 in.)

Laurence Stephen Lowry R.A.(British, 1887-1976)People at the Beach 31.3 x 40.4 cm. (12 3/8 x 16 1/8 in.)

Fred Yates(British, 1922-2008)Still Life with Flowers

Fred Yates(British, 1922-2008)Vase of Flowers

John Bellany C.B.E., R.A., H.R.S.A., L.L.D.(Lon)(British, 1942-2013)Bouquet in a Floral Jug (unframed)

John Bratby R.A.(British, 1928-1992)Two Sunflowers

Philip Sutton R.A.(British, born 1928)Still Life

Anne Estelle Rice(American/British, 1887-1959)White Cyclamen

Joan Gillchrest(British, 1918-2008)Hyacinths Towards Zennor

Mary Fedden R.A.(British, 1915-2012)Still Life with Eggcup

Mary Fedden R.A.(British, 1915-2012)Still Life with Drawers

Bryan Pearce(British, 1929-2007)Fruit Bowl

Peter Collis R.H.A.(Irish, 1929-2012)Still Life with Blue Jug

Geoffrey Key(British, born 1941)Chinese Vases II

Tessa Newcomb(British, born 1955)The Evening after the Visit

Mary Newcomb(British, 1922-2008)Orange Winged Butterfly

Mary Newcomb(British, 1922-2008)Butterfly

Mary Newcomb(British, 1922-2008)Yellow Butterfly

Tessa Newcomb(British, born 1955)Our Field

Mary Newcomb(British, 1922-2008)Fishing Boat

Alan Lowndes(British, 1921-1978)Cap d'Antibes

Mary Fedden R.A.(British, 1915-2012)Oasis Pella, Jordan

Mary Fedden R.A.(British, 1915-2012)Gone Fishing

Alan Furneaux(British, born 1953)The Bay of St Michael's Mount