Augustus John | |
|---|---|
_(NPG_x13487).jpg) John in 1902 byGeorge Charles Beresford | |
| Born | Augustus Edwin John (1878-01-04)4 January 1878 Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales |
| Died | (1961-10-31)31 October 1961 (aged 83) Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England |
| Known for | painter |
| Movement | Post-Impressionism |
| Spouse | |
| Partner | Dorothy "Dorelia" McNeill |
| Children | various, includingCasper,Vivien,Gwyneth,Amaryllis, andTristan |
| Relatives | Gwen John (sister) |
| Awards | Order of Merit Royal Academician |
Augustus Edwin JohnOM RA (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter,draughtsman, andetcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain:Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era ofJohn Singer Sargent andCharles Wellington Furse "... was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning."[1] In the second volume ofBLAST, Percy Wyndham Lewis wrote, referring to John, that the ten years up to 1914 had been "the Augustan decade."[2] He was the younger brother of the painterGwen John.
Born inTenby, at 11, 12 or 13 The Esplanade, now known as The Belgrave Hotel,Pembrokeshire, John was the younger son and third of four children.[3] His father was Edwin William John, a Welsh solicitor; his mother, Augusta Smith (1848–1884), from a long line of Sussex master plumbers,[4] died when he was six, but not before inculcating a love of drawing in both Augustus and his older sisterGwen.[5] At the age of seventeen he briefly attended the Tenby School of Art, then left Wales for London, studying at theSlade School of Art,University College London. He became the star pupil of drawing teacherHenry Tonks and even before his graduation he was considered the most talented draughtsman of his generation.[6] His sister, Gwen was with him at the Slade and became an important artist in her own right.[7] In the 1890s, John lodged in studios atTite Street,Chelsea.[8]
In 1897, John hit submerged rocks diving into the sea at Tenby, suffering a serious head injury; the lengthy convalescence that followed seems to have stimulated his adventurous spirit and accelerated his artistic growth.[3][9] In 1898, he won theSlade Prize withMoses and the Brazen Serpent. John afterward studied independently in Paris where he seems to have been influenced byPierre Puvis de Chavannes.[10]
The need for a regular income following his marriage in 1901 toIda Nettleship (1877–1907), who had been a fellow scholarship student at the Slade, led him to accept a post teaching art at the University of Liverpool.[11]
Over a period of two years from around 1910 Augustus John and his friendsJames Dickson Innes andDerwent Lees painted in the Arenig valley, and one of Innes's favourite subjects was the mountainArenig Fawr. In 2011 this period was made the subject of aBBC documentary titledThe Mountain That Had to Be Painted.[12]
Alderney Manor, Dorset, was sited on the Poole to Ringwood road between Knighton Bottom and Howe Corner from the early 19th century.[13] John established an artists' colony there in 1911. Faye Hammill relates how he lived there with "his five legitimate children, his mistressDorelia McNeill, and his two children by her; and they remained there until 1927, in the company of numerous long-term guests".[14] One frequent visitor was fellow artistHenry Lamb. Aspects of John's life during this period were used as background byMargaret Kennedy in her novelThe Constant Nymph (1924).[15] A housing estate now occupies the site.
In February 1910, John visited and fell in love with the town ofMartigues, inProvence, located halfway between Arles and Marseilles, and first seen from a train en route to Italy.[16] John wrote that Provence "had been for years the goal of my dreams" and Martigues was the town for which he felt the greatest affection. "With a feeling that I was going to find what I was seeking, an anchorage at last, I returned from Marseilles, and, changing at Pas des Lanciers, took the little railway which leads to Martigues. On arriving my premonition proved correct: there was no need to seek further."[17] The connection with Provence continued until 1928, by which time John felt the town had lost its simple charm, and he sold his home there.[18]
John was, throughout his life, particularly interested in theRomani people (whom he referred to as "Gypsies"), and sought them out on his frequent travels around the United Kingdom and Europe, learning to speak various versions of their language. For a time, shortly after his marriage, he and his family, which included his wife Ida, mistress Dorothy (Dorelia) McNeill, and John's children by both women, travelled in a caravan, in gypsy fashion.[19] Later on he became the President of theGypsy Lore Society, a position he held from 1937 until his death in 1961.[20]
By 1913, John was successful enough to commission a new home and studio at Mallord Street, Chelsea, from architectRobert van 't Hoff.[8]
In December 1917 John was attached to the Canadian forces as a war artist and made a number of memorable portraits of Canadian infantrymen. The result was to have been a huge mural forLord Beaverbrook and the sketches and cartoon for this suggest that it might have become his greatest large-scale work. However, like so many of his monumental conceptions, it was never completed. As a war artist, John was allowed to keep his beard; according toWyndham Lewis, John was "the only officer in the British Army, except the King, who wore a beard."[21] After two months in France he was sent home in disgrace after taking part in a brawl.[22] Lord Beaverbrook, whose intervention saved John from a court-martial, sent him back to France where he produced studies for a proposed Canadian War Memorial picture, although the only major work to result from the experience wasFraternity.[23] In 2011, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge finally unveiled this mural at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. This unfinished painting,The Canadians Opposite Lens, is 12 feet high by 40 feet long.[24]
Although known early in the century for his drawings andetchings, the bulk of John's later work consisted of portraits. Those of his two wives and his children were regarded as among his best.[25] He was known for the psychological insight of his portraits, many of which were considered "cruel" for the truth of the depiction.Lord Leverhulme was so upset with his portrait that he cut out the head (since only that part of the image could easily be hidden in his vault) but when the remainder of the picture was returned by error to John there was an international outcry over the desecration.[26]
By the 1920s John was Britain's leading portrait painter. John painted many distinguished contemporaries, includingT. E. Lawrence,Thomas Hardy,W. B. Yeats,Aleister Crowley,Lady Gregory,Tallulah Bankhead,George Bernard Shaw, the cellistGuilhermina Suggia, theMarchesa Casati andElizabeth Bibesco. Perhaps his most famous portrait is of his fellow-countryman,Dylan Thomas, whom he introduced toCaitlin Macnamara, his sometime lover who later became Thomas's wife.[27] Portraits of Dylan Thomas by John are held atNational Museum Cardiff and theNational Portrait Gallery.[28] A commissioned copy of the portrait of T. E. Lawrence was made byAlix Jennings at the request ofJesus College to be its memorial to Lawrence.[29][30][31][32]
It was said that after the war his powers diminished as his bravura technique became sketchier.[33] One critic has claimed that "the painterly brilliance of his early work degenerated into flashiness and bombast, and the second half of his long career added little to his achievement." However, from time to time his inspiration returned, as it did on a trip to Jamaica in 1937.[34] The works done in Jamaica between March and May 1937 evidence a resurgence of his powers, and amounted to "theSt. Martin's summer of his creative genius".[35] In 1944, SirBernard Montgomery commissioned a portrait of himself, but rejected the completed work "because it was not like me"; it was subsequently purchased by theHunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow.[36]
Of his method for painting portraits John explained:[37]
Make a puddle of paint on your palette consisting of the predominant colour of your model's face and ranging from dark to light. Having sketched the features, being most careful of the proportions, apply a skin of paint from your preparation, only varying the mixture with enough red for the lips and cheeks and grey for the eyeballs. The latter will need touches of white and probably some blue, black, brown, or green. If you stick to your puddle (assuming that it was correctly prepared), your portrait should be finished in an hour or so, and be ready for obliteration before the paint dries, when you start afresh.
On 24 January 1901, John marriedIda Nettleship (1877–1907), daughter of the artistJohn Trivett Nettleship, and a fellow student at the Slade. The couple had five sons: David John (1902–1974),[3] SirCaspar John (1903–1984, prominent British Admiral andFirst Sea Lord), Robin John (1904–1988), Edwin John (1905–1978), and Henry John (1907–1935). From 1905 until her death in 1907, Ida lived in Paris with John's mistressDorothy "Dorelia" McNeill. ABohemian style icon, Dorothy lived with John for the rest of their lives, though they never married.[38]
With her, he had four children (two of which were born before the death of Ida in 1907):
ByIan Fleming's widowed mother,Evelyn Ste Croix Fleming,née Rose, he had a daughter,Amaryllis Fleming (1925–1999), who became a noted cellist. Another of his sons, byMavis de Vere Cole, wife of the pranksterHorace de Vere Cole, is the television directorTristan de Vere Cole. His daughterGwyneth Johnstone (1915–2010), by musician Nora Brownsword, was an artist.[42] Augustus John's promiscuity gave rise to rumours that he had fathered as many as 100 children.[43]
In a 1977 interview,Caitlin Thomas was asked about her family's friendship with Augustus John and the rumors surrounding his promiscuity. When asked if John "pounced on" her, she replied, "Oh yes, constantly, and on his daughters."[44]
In later life, John wrote two volumes of autobiography,Chiaroscuro (1952) andFinishing Touches (1964).[45] In old age, although John had ceased to be a moving force in British art, he was still greatly revered, as was demonstrated by the huge show of his work mounted by theRoyal Academy in 1954. He continued to work up until his death inFordingbridge, Hampshire in 1961, his last work being a studio mural in three parts, the left hand of which showed aFalstaffian figure of a French peasant in a yellow waistcoat playing ahurdy-gurdy while coming down a village street. It was Augustus John's final wave goodbye.
He joined thePeace Pledge Union as apacifist in the 1950s, and was a founder member of theCommittee of 100. On 17 September 1961, just over a month before his death, he joined the Committee of 100's's anti-nuclear weapons demonstration inTrafalgar Square, London. At the time, his son, Admiral SirCaspar John wasFirst Sea Lord andChief of Naval Staff. He died at Fordingbridge, aged 83.[46]
He is said to have been the model for the bohemian painter depicted inJoyce Cary's novelThe Horse's Mouth, which was later made into a1958 film of the same name withAlec Guinness in the lead role.
Michael Holroyd published a biography of John in 1975 and it is a mark of the public's continued interest in the painter that Holroyd published a new version of the biography in 1996. A major exhibition, 'Gwen John and Augustus John,' was held atTate Britain over the winter of 2004/5. According to the gallery's publicity, this exhibition revealed 'that although Augustus described himself and his sister as "the same thing, really," their art developed in different directions. Augustus' work seems wildly exuberant against Gwen's more introverted approach, but both artists indicate a similar flight from the modern world into a realm of fantasy.[47] The exhibition went on to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff later in 2005. In 2018Poole Museum in Dorset hosted the exhibition 'Augustus John: Drawn from Life,' which then went on toSalisbury Museum in 2019.
Early in his career John became a leading figure in theNew English Art Club, where he frequently exhibited in the years up to the First World War. With his vivid manner of portraiture and his ability to catch unerringly some striking and usually unfamiliar aspect of his subject, he supersededSargent as England's fashionable portrait painter. In 1921, he was elected an Associate of theRoyal Academy and elected a full R.A. in 1928. He was named to theOrder of Merit byGeorge VI in 1942. He was a trustee of theTate Gallery from 1933 to 1941, and President of theRoyal Society of Portrait Painters from 1948 to 1953. He was awarded theFreedom of the Town ofTenby on 30 October 1959.[48] On his death in 1961, an obituary inThe New York Times observed, 'He was regarded as the grand old man of British painting, and as one of the greatest in British history.'[49]
John's granddaughter Rebecca John, the leading authority on her grandfather, said in 2024, while praising his earlier work, that "most [paintings since the 1930s] should have been burned. My grandfather went down the drain from the 1930s onwards, drank too much, lost his judgment, and took every opportunity to earn money from portraits of society ladies and the wives of notable men".[50]
His work is held in the permanent collections of many museums worldwide, including theMuseum of New Zealand,[51] theSanta Barbara Museum of Art,[52] theBritish Museum,[53] theMuseum of Modern Art,[54] theUniversity of Michigan Museum of Art,[55] theBrooklyn Museum,[56]Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales,[57] theDetroit Institute of Arts,[58] and thePhiladelphia Museum of Art.[59]
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HTbdQpasheYLyric: Remember this oil by Augustus John?
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