John Armstrong was born in 1893 in Hastings. He studied at St. John’s College, Oxford, 1912-13, and then at St. John’s Wood School of Art 1913-14. During the war he served in the Royal Field Artillery 1914-19, before briefly returning to St. John’s Wood School. He began his professional career as a theatre designer in London, gaining important patrons including Lillian and Samuel Courtauld, who commissioned Armstrong to decorate a room in their Portman Square home. His first solo exhibition was at the Leicester Galleries in 1928. In 1933 he joined Unit One alongside Ben Nicholson, Paul Nash, Edward Burra, Henry Moore, Edward Wadsworth, John Bigge and Barbara Hepworth, with whom he exhibited at the Unit One exhibition. From the early 1930s onwards his work became Surrealist in style – uncanny, romantically dream-like and heavily imbued with symbolism. Armstrong died in 1973. His work is held in numerous international public collections including the Tate, the Imperial War Museum, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the National Gallery of Australia.

John Armstrong’s solo exhibition in December 1938 was his first one-man exhibition since 1929. With the exception of his activities as a member of Unit One, Armstrong had primarily dedicated the 1930s to his work in the performing arts, as a set and costume designer for film, theatre and ballet productions. He worked with luminaries of the arts world, including Alexander Korda, the legendary film producer, the choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton and the composer Sir William Walton (also famed for pinning a herring to a Miró object on the opening night of the 1936 Surrealist exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries). Armstrong’s 1938 exhibition was one of two halves – the first half consisted of paintings directly inspired by the Spanish civil war of crumbling houses and abandoned streets. The second comprised work that formed in essence a coda to his multi-faceted design oriented practice of the 1920s and 1930s. During this early period of his career, Armstrong produced many elaborate and decorative murals for the London homes of society figures, such as Lillian and Samuel Courtauld, for the infamous London cabaret club founded by Elsa Lanchester, The Cave of Harmony, and for various hotels owned by Tom Laughton, brother of Charles. These murals and decorative panels were often populated by wild animals and exotic, mythological figures inspired by the ancient world. Armstrong was well versed in the classical world, studying Classics from an early age at St Paul’s School, visiting the antique exhibits at the British Museum and cemented by his years spent during World War I in the Royal Field Artillery in Egypt and Macedonia, experiencing the wonders of classical civilization at first-hand.

The Goddess was a highlight from this second half of the exhibition, a strikingly bold, icon-like painting. The work occupies a unique transitional position at this stage of Armstrong’s career, as both the culmination of his earlier, decorative work whilst also, with the presence of the feather in the goddess’s hand, foreshadowing the anthropomorphic, surrealist work to follow. A formidable Ancient Egyptian or Macedonian-like goddess with hard eyes and a cruel smile faces us straight on, demanding our attention or perhaps our fearful devotion. Against a red background, the colour of fire and blood, and symbolic of vital life forces, of human ferocity and passion, she possesses both masculine strength with her engorged bicep muscles and a womanly seductive form.

The highly distinctive frame with a silvered serrated inner section echoing the goddess’s hairstyle is Armstrong’s original. Armstrong was meticulous with the framing of his pictures, establishing a collaborative relationship with picture framer Robert Sielle. In an article in The Studio in 1939 entitled ‘My Paintings and Their Frames’, Armstrong chose The Goddess as the perfect example to illustrate his method of framing his paintings to complement and enhance composition and colour.