Boy in a Landscape (Portrait of Eric Verrico)

John Minton was an English painter and illustrator known for his eclectic style which combined elements of French and British Neo-Romanticism. His main theme is the young male figure placed in emotionally charged settings with homoerotic overtones. He was a celebrity of London’s bohemia and a key figure of Neo-Romanticism in the 1940s. He was a complex character and. the growth of abstraction in art compounded personal problems for this figurative painter, leading to his suicide.

Eric Verrico was one of Minton’s students at Camberwell School of Art where he taught illustration from 1943-1946. Many students gathered around Minton, becoming known as ‘Johnny’s Circus’. Verrico frequently posed for Minton and was possessed of ‘astonishing good looks’. Of Italian extraction, Verrico was conscripted into the RAF, changing his name to Verrier for fear of post war anti Italian feeling. Minton often preferred to depict his subjects seated and seen from a high vantage point.