Provenance:

Fletcher Trust Collection In the 1930s and 1940s Eric Lee-Johnson was one of a number of artists including Christopher Perkins, Russell Clark, Mervyn Taylor, John Holmwood and Gordon Walters who revived the theme of the destruction of our indigenous forests. They produced so many paintings on this theme that they received the not altogether flattering name, the Dead Tree School. Although there can be no doubt of their conservationist conviction, it is also significant that they were influenced by English painters such as Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland whose interest in anti-romanticism had led them to seek subjects which deflated traditionally romantic notions. Instead of the great oaks of Constable or the soft silver-grey foliage of the Norfolk School of watercolourists they painted hard edged images of dead or burned trees, many of them sights imprinted on their minds in the battle ravaged landscapes of World War I.

Eric Lee-Johnson's painting Casualties not only tells us about his conservationist sympathies but also about his determination to be a modern painter, informed about what was happening in the London art circles he had recently been a part of. Lee-Johnson was also a noted photographer who made many studies of twisted tree limbs and bark textures. Casualties employs a very fluid watercolour style to depict slain trees as people engaged in a violent struggle. It is as though the living, moving trees are frozen in death. This anthropomorphism underlines the rape of the land theme. By the 1950s Eric Lee-Johnson had abandoned this theme for much softer and more obviously picturesque works depicting old houses which were by then being demolished in our town and cities.