Vintage Still Life Painting with Chinese Vase and Scroll, by Frederick Roberts Johnson

Vintage Still Life Painting with Chinese Vase and Scroll, by Frederick Roberts Johnson (British: 1900 – 1986), circa 1940, an oil on canvas still life painting with an antique Chinese figural painted scroll, and a Chinese Export blue and white floral pattern vase with red and yellow dahlias, unsigned, came directly from artist’s estate. Unframed.

The painting remains in very good condition, unframed as found in artist’s studio.

Frederick Roberts Johnson became a very successful illustrator in the late 1920s and 30s, creating cartoons and caricatures for Punch, Everyman, and Time and Tide magazines.

In 1924 he visited Polperro in Cornwall for the first time and fell in love with the place. He summered there and worked for a tourist art gallery producing pokerwork burnt wood designs. He eventually purchased his own loft and became an integral member of the Polperro community.

His most well-known commercial art was a series of caricature portraits, signed ‘Essex’, for the Punch’s People in Punch series in the mid-1930s. His most widely known advertisements appeared not only in periodicals but were on display in London buses and the Underground, promoting ‘Abdulla’ cigarettes.
Alarmed at the rise of Fascism, alongside Wragg, Fred became actively involved in the left-wing newspaper The Tribune, his political cartoons representing a considerable contribution to the early years of the publication.

He is also well known for his series of fishermen portraits hanging in the Polperro Museum. The Cornish art historian David Tovey found a trove of over 250 forgotten paintings by Johnson that he never exhibited or offered for sale – his commercial work had been successful enough that he could paint these purely for his own pleasure. The painting offered here is one of those personal artworks.

Measures: 30 in H x 20 in W