Master Art

Many of John Minton’s drawings and watercolours of the late 1940s depict farms and record farming practices that were soon to be mechanized. This large sheet can be associated with a handful of watercolours by Minton of pieces of farm machinery that were no longer in use, all dating from 1948 and of similar dimensions. A comparable watercolour of Derelict Farm Machinery, signed and dated 1948, was with Stephen Ongpin Fine Art in 2015 and is today in the collection of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. Among several other comparable studies of farm machinery by Minton, all dating from 1948, is a watercolour of a Farm Machine, of similar dimensions to the present sheet, which was on the London art market in 2006. A related drawing of Farm Machinery from 1948, also of similar dimensions, was in the Oliver Brown collection, and another of a Derelict Farm Machine was, like all of these drawings, at one time with the Lefevre Gallery in London.

Also related to these watercolours, although earlier in date and without colour, is a pen and wash drawing of Agricultural Implements of 1945, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.