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During the 1930s and 1940s, John Minton was associated with a loosely knit group of artists now known as the neoromantics, due to their imaginative approach toward nature and the human figure inspired by nineteenth-century visionary artists like William Blake and Samuel Palmer. By the mid-1940s, Minton was open yet conflicted about his homosexuality, which was illegal at the time in England, and depicted male figures—sometimes, as here, in clandestine self-portrait—in dreamlike landscapes or spaces fraught with sexual tension and intrigue. An advocate of figuration in painting, Minton grew increasingly out of step with newer abstract styles emerging around 1950 and as the decade wore on, he developed mental health problems and began seriously abusing alcohol. He took his own life in 1957, at the age of thirty-nine.

Gallery label for A Decade of Gifts and Acquisitions (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-06-01 - 2017-08-13)