Exhibition Of The Week John Minton: A Centenary

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (01243-774557, www.pallant.org.uk). Until 1 October

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In the early 1950s, John Minton was “probably Britain’s most popular artist”, said Mark Hudson in The Daily Telegraph. His colourful and romantic paintings won over postwar British audiences with their “alluring vision of foreign climes”, and his reputation eclipsed those of his contemporaries Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. How quickly – and in Minton’s case, calamitously – fortunes can change. Within a few years, he found himself out of fashion, unable to come to terms with his “conflicted personality”, and battling with drink and drugs. He died of a possibly self-Fadministered overdose in 1957, aged just 39. Posterity has not been kind. Minton is little remembered these days. His work – if thought of at all – is seen as “reflecting the provincialism of postwar British art”. Now, a c