Illustrating Corsica: The modernist landscape of John Minton’s Time Was Away

Abstract

Abstract The article considers John Minton’s (1917–57) illustrations of landscape for the book Time Was Away: A Notebook in Corsica (1948) with an aim to recover their significance in the history of illustration. Certain illustrations are positioned as notable for their ambiguous relationship to the text. I elaborate thinking around text–image relations alongside questions concerning the cross-fertilization of fine art and illustration. In their adoption of modernist principles, Minton’s illustrations are significant in recasting the role of illustration in the artistic context of post-war Britain. In melding formalist effects with realist concerns, the illustrations raise broader matters around realism, fine art and the democratic potential of illustration. I show that in seizing on cinematic techniques, Minton offers an effectively modern response to the traditional paradigm of depth associated with landscape and thereby proffers an alternative to the Modernist paradox that a teleological development of painting is at odds with landscape.