In addition to landscapes, portraits and other paintings, some of them on an unusually large scale, he built up a reputation as an illustrator of books.

[1] He spent eight months studying in France, frequently accompanied by Ayrton, and returned from Paris when the Second World War began.

The settings moved the piece from the 11th century to "the age of illuminated missals";[3] The Manchester Guardian wrote that they "should be long remembered".

The Times wrote, "Mr. Minton is seen to have an overcast, gloomy realism, and much intensity of feeling, which he expresses in dark colour schemes, both in a curious and effective self-portrait and in paintings of streets and bombed buildings.

Between 1945 and 1956 he had seven solo exhibitions at the Lefevre Gallery, notwithstanding his work as tutor to the painting school of the Royal College of Art in 1949, a post that he held until the year before his death.

The problem of the painter is this 'translation'; that is, he has to create some arrangement of shape, line and colour which convey the idea or the emotion which moved him to paint this particular picture.

"[2] He designed textiles and wallpapers;[2] he produced posters for London Transport and Ealing Studios; and he was highly regarded as a portrait painter.

The Times wrote, "Even when they were ostensibly of Spain and Jamaica, Minton's landscapes looked back to Samuel Palmer for their mood.

They were densely patterned and luxuriantly coloured, and it was always the fullness and richness of the scene which attracted his eye and which he painted with such evident enjoyment.

[14] Although Minton was respected both by the conservative Royal Academy and the modernist London Group,[2] he was out of sympathy with the abstract painting that began to prevail during the 1950s, and he felt increasingly out of touch with current fashion.