Worldsenders

Some of you won't recognise the picture above, probably taken in the thirties from the eastern corner of Langton Street, looking south south-west across the World's End towards the power station. The road running from left to right is the King's Road. The World's End pub is just off picture to the left; the bus is standing roughly in front of what is now the World's End Pharmacy.
I like to think of the young lady with the long hair, third from the left, walking towards us as Beckett's Celia:
"She had turned out of Edith Grove into Cremorne Road, intending to refresh herself with a smell of the Reach and then return by Lots Road, when chancing to glance to her right she saw, motionless in the mouth of Stadium Street, considering alternately the sky and a sheet of paper, a man. Murphy"
Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Francis John Minton (1917-1957)

The World's End public house on King's Road, Chelsea, as painted by John Minton.

Minton lived and died in a studio flat at 9 Apollo Place, a cul-de-sac off the southern end of Riley Street, close to the river, which had also been the home of Francis Bacon and the critic David Sylvester. Minton's suicide was reported in the Daily Mirror of Tuesday 22 January, 1957.


On the 24th the Times, despite getting the address wrong (they call it Apollo Street), beneath the headline "Bouts of alcoholism", adds that: "... police found a diary with the pages for last Monday to Friday ruled through and the word "drunk" written across them ... By his bedside was a book, The Complete Inebriate, dealing with the psychological aspect of inebriation cases."

He left the flat in Apollo Place to Henrietta Moraes, model and muse for Bacon, Lucien Freud and the artists of the Soho subculture. Minton is also remembered for Freud's portrait of him.

John Minton by Lucien Freud

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