Albany Fine Art : Augustus JOHN, OM, RA

Augustus JOHN, OM, RA

British, 1878-1961

John Self Portrait, 1913
© National Museum Wales

The leading portrait painter of his generation, celebrated both for his talent and his bohemian lifestyle, whose draughtsmanship was compared to that of Michelangelo, Gauguin and Matisse

Augustus John was one of the most prominent artistic personalities of his generation and Britain's leading portrait painter for almost 50 years. He was renowned as a brilliant draughtsman and colourist and his portraits were acclaimed for their striking and penetrating likenesses which he executed with great panache and bravura. He was equally famous for his scandalous bohemian lifestyle and his lifelong fascination with the Roma (Gypsy) people and their culture.

Born in Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, Wales, in 1878, Augustus Edwin John was the younger son and third of four children of Edwin William John, a prosperous and extremely ‘proper’ Welsh solicitor (not a gypsy, as John sometimes later claimed) and Augusta (née Smith). John later recalled that his father, "loved children, provided of course they were legitimate and well-behaved".

His family was both ‘colourful’ and perhaps somewhat intimidating: his father was, by all accounts, a stern and dour individual; his grandfather somewhat eccentric, encouraging all his grandchildren to "Talk, and if you can't think of anything to say, tell a lie” and “If you make a mistake, make it with authority”; and his two aunts, Rose and Lily, who looked after the children, were ardent members of The Salvation Army and rode around in a wicker pony trap known as The Hallelujah Chariot. Despite this the John children enjoyed a carefree childhood and remarkable freedom, roaming wild over the lovely Welsh countryside and beaches near their home.

Their mother, Augusta, died in 1884 when John was only six, but not before she had inculcated a love of drawing in both Augustus and his older sister Gwen (Gwendolen Mary John, 1876-1939). Gwen was also destined to become an accomplished artist, spending most of her life in Paris, studying with James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American, 1834-1903), becoming the mistress of the sculptor Auguste Rodin (François-Auguste-René Rodin, French, 1840-1917) for ten years, and exhibiting her work both in Paris and London.

In the same year, the Johns moved to Tenby. John was educated locally and at Clifton, Bristol. At the age of 16 he briefly attended the Tenby School of Art but, insistent that he should gain a formal art training, his father rather dubiously agreed that he should attend The Slade School of Fine Art at University College, London (1894-98) and duly sent him off with a very small allowance and much solemn advice – "Be a Michelangelo if you like but first make your living".

John’s peer group at The Slade included such future luminaries as Sir John Lavery RA (Irish, 1856-1941) and Sir William Orpen RA (Irish, 1878-1931). His sister, Gwen, joined him at The Slade the following year (1895). During this period study at The Slade was characterised by a strict regime, study of the Old Masters and great emphasis on draughtsmanship (excellence at drawing). John was awarded a Scholarship in 1896 and won the Figure Drawing Prize in 1896/97.

John rapidly became the star pupil of The Slade’s two principal drawing masters: Henry Tonks, FRCS (British, 1862-1937), who was to become "the most renowned and formidable teacher of his generation" and Frederick Brown (British, 1851-1941), who co-founded the New English Art Club (NEAC) in 1886 with other Paris-trained British artists who felt their work was being neglected by the Royal Academy. John was considered to be so talented that, even before his graduation, he was recognised as the most brilliant draughtsman of his generation.

On holiday in the summer of 1897 two incidents occurred which would have a profound effect on John’s life: on a walking holiday in Pembrokeshire he encountered a group of itinerant Irish gypsies - which would lead to a lifelong fascination with Romany culture and their way of life; and on the same summer holiday he suffered a serious head injury, hitting his head on a rock whilst diving into the sea – a trauma which seemingly resulted in a radical change in his personality and character and led to the myth that, “he had dived into the sea, hit his head on a rock and emerged a genius”.

Whilst John undoubtedly had a diving accident, the ‘personality change’ might equally possibly have been the start of the ‘John myth’ of the artist as The Great Bohemian. John himself said, "In spite of a superficial appearance of negligence, my mode of dress was not unstudied and had a style of its own".

Augustus John
by Sir William Orpen (Irish, 1878-1931), 1899
© National Portrait Gallery, London

However, it certainly appears to be true that John, previously a quiet, shy, and awkward yet very diligent student, returned to The Slade a different man, both physically and artistically: six feet tall, he was an imposing figure and, physically, he now appeared subject to mood swings, impatience, unpredictability and restlessness, drinking heavily, womanising constantly, and dressing as a scruffy bohemian with a distinctly unorthodox appearance - parting his russet hair in the middle, sporting a red beard, a gypsy hat, silk scarf and, shockingly, gold earrings that would become not only his trademark but required dress for any would-be bohemian student. Artistically, he was no longer the 'methodical' student of the previous year, his paintings and drawings, including some beautiful nudes and other highly accomplished drawings, becoming much more adventurous, spontaneous and assured. His friend, the painter and author Wyndham Lewis (Percy Wyndham Lewis, Canadian 1882-British 1957) remarked that John had become a "great man of action into whose hands the fairies had placed a paintbrush instead of a sword".

After classes, John was often to be seen sketching his fellow students in the anarchist clubs of Fitzrovia, an area off Tottenham Court Road in London. When Augustus John met up with Nina Hamnett (later known as the Queen of Bohemia) on one such occasion he declared with some degree of pride, “We are the sort of people our fathers warned us against!”.

Among a small coterie of fellow students were his sister, Gwen, and Ida Nettleship (British, c.1877-1907), the daughter of John Trivett Nettleship (British, 1841-1902), a painter of animals, particularly lions (and the author of Essays on Robert Browning's Poetry, the first major work of criticism of the poet and playwright’s work, which resulted in a lifelong friendship between the two men).

Ida, who was to become John’s first wife, was one of a group of brilliant women students, most of whom, like she, sacrificed their art for love. A distinguished student, she won a travelling scholarship in 1895 and left The Slade in 1897 to visit Italy.

In 1898 John added to his list of Slade prizes when he was awarded Second Prize in Figure Painting and, more importantly, he won the most prestigious of all the prizes awarded to students at The Slade, the Summer Composition Prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent. In the 1890s the Summer Composition Prize required students to produce a large-scale, multi-figure compositions from a set title. John’s picture is an excellent example, with figures placed in complex position in the style of the Old Masters who were some of John’s most formative influences, as he recognised, “First, Rembrandt (Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Dutch, 1606-1669) was my great director, and later Piero della Francesca (Italian, 1415/20–1492). The young student should never avoid, but rather should cultivate, these influences, and should strive to be very susceptible to them”.

After leaving The Slade in 1898 John visited Paris and was to return there every year. In 1899 he held his first one-man exhibition at the Carfax Gallery in London and later that year he travelled on the continent with Ida, and part of the time with a group of fellow artists, Sir William Rothenstein (British, 1872-1945) and his younger brother Albert Daniel Rutherston (British, 1881–1953), Sir William Orpen (Irish, 1878-1931) and Charles Conder (British, 1868-1909).

In 1900 John used his Slade prize to travel to Paris again and to study independently, where he seems to have been influenced by the work of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (French, 1824-1898) and Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973). John noted that, “I have had little training in the schools, the Slade School of Art being about the only one. Here drawing is taught very soundly, and the student is frequently directed to an acquaintance with the Old Masters. While I lived in Paris I never attended the schools, so you see I was uncorrupted, and later had nothing to undo”.

Leaving Paris, he continued his travels throughout the Netherlands and Belgium and on his return to London, encouraged by his former Slade tutor, Frederick Brown, he started to exhibit regularly at the New English Art Club (NEAC) and elsewhere.

Ida returned to London a few months later and resumed her relationship with John. Described as sensuously beautiful, in a Pre-Raphaelite way, she had almond eyes, a mass of dark hair and full lips. She was exhilarated by John and he was the only man she ever loved. They became engaged but, typically, John, rather forgetfully, also became engaged to an Austrian chambermaid at the same time. Having disentangled himself from his other affair, John and Ida eloped and married secretly in 1901, in order to avoid being seen to 'live in sin'.


Ida John (née Nettleship) by Augustus John, c.1900 © Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool	Augustus John Self Portrait, c.1901 © National Portrait Gallery, London

Despite being identified as a major talent at The Slade, John needed to earn a living to support his now pregnant wife (their first child, David, was born in 1902) and, in 1901, at the age of 23, John and Ida moved to Liverpool where D S MacColl (Dugald Sutherland MacColl, Scottish, 1859-1948: watercolour painter, art critic, lecturer, writer and Keeper of the Tate Gallery 1906-11) had obtained an appointment for John as an art instructor at the School of Art which was affiliated to the University of Liverpool, and known affectionately as the Art Sheds. John was required to teach there three days a week at a salary of £300 per annum. During this time he embarked on his first large scale, ‘official’ portraits, with paintings of Harold Chaloner Dowdall, later Lord Mayor of Liverpool, and his wife, the Honourable Mary Francis Harriet Borthwick, and produced many etchings: some 130 during the period 1901-1910 which were, in the main, focused on the human figure, on small plates and printed in small editions.

It was at Liverpool that John met Dr John Sampson, the University Librarian and a self-taught authority on the Roma (Gypsies). He introduced John to the richness of Roma culture and their way of life and taught him the Romany language. John and his family subsequently spent periods travelling through Wales and England in vardos (gypsy caravans). The Roma became a lifelong fascination for John and during his subsequent career he painted and etched many scenes of them in North Wales and elsewhere.

Always one to show that he was a free spirit, John disappeared for weeks at a time on camping trips with gypsies while he was supposed to be teaching at Liverpool (on a later occasion, he got off a train in Marseille in order to travel all the way back to Spain to paint a girl he had seen from the train window).

For the rest of his life John would search out gypsy encampments wherever he went - often travelling in his own horse-drawn vardo. Joining them round their campfires at night, he would perform his own repertoire of Romany songs and dances. John’s fascination was more than a romantic attachment. He recognised the true freedom of their way of life, untouched by the advances of an increasingly industrial and materialistic society, an attitude exemplified by the ritual of burning of all belongings on death. In turn the gypsies accepted John as an ‘Honorary Gypsy’.

By the summer of 1902 John had tired of teaching and he and Ida returned to London, where he started to paint more portraits in order to support his growing family. He also exhibited at the New English Art Club (NEAC) and the Camden Town Group and was introduced to a number of influential salons of the time, including that of Lady Gregory (formerly Isabella Augusta Persse) both in London and at her summer home at Coole Park, near Gort in County Galway. (On later visits to the west coast of Ireland, between 1915-20, John painted Galway, a triptych and the largest mural painting he produced which is held at the Tate Gallery, London, but rarely shown due to its size).

Sadly, Ida’s sacrifice of her career proved in vain since marriage did nothing to stop John's philandering and he was openly unfaithful to her. Now a mother, Ida had lost the fey, mysterious quality that had initially attracted him and he found his children a distraction. He sought inspiration rather than responsibility and a mistress who would fulfil the roles of lover, muse and ‘earth mother’.

It was no surprise, therefore, that in the same year (1902) he fell hopelessly in love with one of his sister’s friends and models, Dorothy McNeill (1881-1969). She was a young typist called Dorothy, who was taking drawing lessons from Gwen. John ‘christened’ her ‘Dorelia’ and later, affectionately, ‘Dodo’. She became John’s mistress and, despite numerous other affairs, Ida and Dorelia would be the anchors around which John’s world would revolve with Dorelia becoming John’s most important model and lifelong inspiration.


Dorelia by Augustus John Private Collection	Head of Dorelia McNeill by Augustus John, 1911 © National Museum Wales

John spun all his romantic fantasies around Dorelia, as his muse and his lover. She possessed a sultry beauty but it was her calm, soothing serenity that many admirers found so attractive, including John, Gwen and even Ida. John had introduced her to Ida who, against her better judgement, found that she liked Dorelia (and, in due course, would fall in love with her). Hoping that a ménage à trois would save her marriage, Ida agreed that they should find a big house where they could all live together.

Before this could take place, however, Dorelia decided to 'elope' with John's sister, Gwen, in the autumn of 1903. They travelled to Bordeaux and set off on a walking tour with their art equipment in hand, intending to reach Rome. Sleeping in fields and haystacks, they lived intimately together and survived by selling portrait sketches along the way. They reached Toulouse before deciding to return to Paris, where they arrived in 1904. There Gwen found work as an artist's model and, in the same year, she began modelling for the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and became his lover, an affair which would continue unabated for the next ten years.

Gwen John, Self Portrait, 1902

Gwen painted several sensitive portraits of Dorelia, some of her finest work, but John was madly jealous when he heard that Dorelia was posing in the nude for other artists, something she had never agreed to do for him.

Dorelia in a Black Dress (c.1903-04)
by Gwen John

All three of the Johns were distraught. Ida kept writing to Dorelia, urging her to return, and she encouraged John to go to Paris after his new love and bring her back, giving him firm instructions not to return without her. John set out for Paris only to find that Dorelia had fled to Belgium with a young artist called Leonard. Frenetic and emotional correspondence followed. Ida wrote to a friend, “She is ours and she knows it. By God, I will haunt her till she comes back” and Gwen begged her to return, “Dorelia, you know I love you”. Dorelia finally succumbed and returned to England to make a brief attempt at living in a ménage à trois with John and Ida in Essex.

This domestic situation did not prove easy for either Ida or Dorelia and it cut Ida off from her friends and family. She wrote curtly to one curious friend, “not to bother me any more to know where Dorelia sleeps. You know we are not a conventional family”.

By now Dorelia had given birth to a child. Motherhood drew her and Ida closer and, like Gwen, Ida fell under Dorelia's spell. When they were parted for a few days Ida wrote, “I was bitter cold last night without your burning hot, not to say, scalding, body next to me”. Ida proposed they should 'elope' and set up home in Paris with their respective children, where Augustus could visit when it suited him.

All three started a new life in Paris, in a tiny one-bedroom flat near the Luxembourg Gardens, with only one bed between three, and the children sleeping in boxes. This proved too chaotically bohemian even for John. He returned to London and found himself a new mistress which was too much for Dorelia and she and her children moved into lodgings of her own. Ida was now pregnant with her fifth child and was soon horrified to discover that John wanted to live with Dorelia again. She nevertheless felt obliged to agree.

By 1903, and at the age of only 25, John was recognised within the art world as the leading British artist of the day. He was celebrated for his brilliant figure drawing and his talent was compared to that of Michelangelo (Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, Italian, 1475-1564), Gauguin (Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin, French, 1848-1903) and Matisse (Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse, French, 1869-1954).

John based himself in Paris in 1906-07 although he was frequently absent for considerable periods. On one such return to England, in 1907, he met fellow Welshman and painter, James Dickson Innes (1887-1914), with whom he travelled in Wales. It was this friendship that inspired John to paint landscapes in a more modern and Impressionistic style.

Meanwhile Ida was dealing with her pregnancy alone in Paris and, feeling the beginnings of labour, walked by herself to hospital. Tragically, she died there of puerperal fever and peritonitis a few days later at the age of 30, in 1907. John spent the last few days of Ida’s life with her.

Despite being wracked by guilt and depression for the last few months of her life, it is believed that Ida never once uttered a single complaint or recrimination at John’s selfishness and neglect, feeling that she could give more to art by being a good wife to John than by pursuing her own promising artistic career.

Within three months of Ida’s death John was deeply involved in another passionate affair despite the fact that Dorelia had returned to London to take Ida’s place and look after her children. She later became John’s second wife. Already with two other children by Dorelia (they were to have four), John, never the perfect father, also struggled with Ida's family over who should bring up their children.

John began to find commercial success as a painter from about 1909 and, in 1910, he visited Provence and fell in love with the town of Martigues, located half way between Arles and Marseilles. 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 … my premonition proved correct: there was no need to seek further”. John’s connection with Provence continued until 1928, by which time he felt the town had lost its simple charm.

Despite being an exquisite draughtsman and a wonderful colourist, John’s attitude to Modern Art was somewhat ambivalent. He admired Paul Cézanne (French, 1839-1906), Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890) and Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903) and the style of the work he exhibited at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea, in 1910, was certainly much criticised by Traditionalist school (a 'badge of honour' for a ‘modern’ artist).

Even so John declined to be included in the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition held in 1912-13 at the Grafton Gallery in London yet chose to exhibit at the much broader New York Armory Show (officially known as The International Exhibition of Modern Art) in 1913. He also showed several works at the rather inelegantly titled, Exhibition of Works by Certain Modern Artists of Welsh Birth or Extraction, organised by the National Museum of Wales in 1913-14. John followed his own path, “I belong to no definite school and I am not sure that any would be complimented if I did!”.

On his return to England, and largely in order to resolve the issue of caring for his children by Ida, John, Dorelia and the painter Henry Lamb (Australian, 1883-British, 1960) rented Alderney Manor, a substantial estate near Parkstone in Dorset, in 1911. John had first visited Dorset in 1899 and it was perhaps no coincidence that there was a large gypsy encampment nearby.

Henry Lamb

Henry Lamb
(Australian, 1883– British, 1960)

Self Portrait, 1914
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Alderney Manor was a large, eccentric, pink, low-built house with gothic windows, a castellated parapet, a private, walled garden and a large lake, set in 60 acres of heath and woodland. It had been built by an eccentric Frenchman and was owned by Sir Winston Churchill's liberal aunt, Lady Wimborne, who was "pleased to have a clever artist as a tenant."

The John entourage arrived in a colourful caravan of carts and wagons, the children singing as they came down the drive. They turned the property into the very picture of a bohemian commune: the coach house was converted into John’s studio, the cottage was converted to accommodate the seemingly endless stream of visitors, some invited, some who just dropped in and would stay for days, months, even years. Other guests were accommodated in the blue and yellow vardos which were dotted around the grounds and, when numbers swelled for weekend parties, in gypsy tents or alfresco in the orchard.

Between private tutors for the girls and school for the boys, the children ran wild over the heathland and through the woods and bathed naked in the lake. The children helped with the household chores and everyone was dressed in handmade clothes. The communal chaos was presided over by Dorelia who, though dressed in pre-Raphaelite robes and constantly looking as if she was about to pose for a portrait, was always busy organising guests and ensuring the household ran smoothly, helped by her sister, Edie McNeill, who ran the kitchen.


Dorelia McNeill in the Garden at Alderney Manor, 1911 by Augustus John © National Museum Wales	Edie McNeill, 1911 by Henry Lamb (Australian 1883–British 1960) © National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Over the years Alderney Manor acquired all the trappings of a back-to-the-land community, with cows, a breeding herd of saddleback pigs, various donkeys, New Forest ponies, carthorses, miscellaneous cats and dogs, 12 hives of bees (which stung everyone), a dovecote (which the doves deserted), and a 'biteful' monkey.

This communal life did nothing to cramp John’s style, however, and his affairs continued, almost too numerous to mention: with the English aristocrat and society hostess, Lady Ottoline Morrell; with Mrs Strindberg, the wife of the Swedish writer, playwright, Johan August Strindberg (1849–1912) and, simultaneously, with Edith Ashley; with Caitlin Macnamara, who subsequently married Dylan Thomas; with the actress Eileen Hawthorne: and with Mrs Evelyn Beatrice St Croix Fleming, Ian Fleming's mother, by whom he had a daughter, Amaryliss, later an accomplished cellist. Brian Sewell, the art critic, has aptly commented that John was driven “to draw the women whom he bedded, and bed the women whom he drew”.

The claim that John fathered some 100 illegitimate children is no doubt an exaggeration, it being fashionable at one time for ladies in certain circles to claim to have had a child by him. It is not known (including, in all likelihood, by John himself) how many children, or ‘Johnlets’ as they were sometimes called, he did father. However they were sufficiently numerous that, in his old age, John took to patting the head of any infant he met on the streets of Chelsea, "just in case". Despite his highly unconventional ways, John never seemed to deny any of his offspring: he took some under his communal wing and he paid maintenance to support others.

At Alderney Manor John would paint and sketch his children and guests, take part in afternoon jazz sessions, dance the tango, and preside over the many parties, bonfires and trips to local pubs, particularly The Shoulder of Mutton, where, at other times, he could be found drinking with the local gypsies.

Augustus John, Family & Friends

Depicts Augustus and his wife and muse Dorelia, Dorelia's sister
Edie McNeill, the artist Henry Lamb (British, 1883-1960),
the Irish poet Francis Macnamara (1886-1946), family and friends

His home became a regular ‘haunt’ for many of the Bloomsbury Group who would frequently travel down to Dorset from London: the painter Dorothy Eugenie Brett (American, 1883-1977); the writer Giles Lytton Strachey and his lover, the painter, Dora de Houghton Carrington (generally known as ‘Carrington’, British, 1893-1932); the philosopher, pacifist, polymath and fellow Welshman, Bertrand Russell; the painter and author Percy Wyndham Lewis (British, 1882-1957) and other more exotic characters who would make it their home, amongst them Chilean painter Álvaro Guevara (1894-1951), designer Fanny Fletcher, Polish musician Jan Sliwinski, and Icelandic poet Haraldar Thorskinsson. Nevertheless John would still spend considerable periods at his home and studio in Mallord Street, Chelsea, London, or travel to the Continental for artistic inspiration, in search of gypsy camps or new lovers.

He was a tireless self-publicist and a larger-than-life figure. He carefully cultivated his image as an ‘outsider’ and all-round rebel - characterised by his physical stature and trademark long hair, flowing Christ-like beard, gold earrings, silk scarf, and large black, broad-brimmed hat; and his legendary lifestyle which had earned him the epithet of the King of Bohemia - the great artist and lover with a circle of celebrity friends and a steady stream of wealthy and influential patrons.

During the First World War he was rejected as unfit for service but, in 1917, his friendship with Lord Beaverbrook enabled him to obtain an honorary commission as a Major in the Canadian Overseas Military Forces, in 1917. He was given permission to paint what he liked on the Western Front and Lord Beaverbrook invited him to work for the Canadian War Memorials Fund. (He was also allowed to retain his beard, thus becoming, with the sole exception of King George V, the only officer in the Allied forces to be allowed to ‘sport’ facial hair).

John produced a number of memorable portraits of Canadian infantrymen, preliminary studies for a planned an epic 40-foot canvas, The Pageant of War, for Lord Beaverbrook. His sketches and an exact miniature cartoon suggest this might have become his greatest large-scale work but, like so many of his monumental conceptions, it was never completed.

After only two months in France, he was forced to return to England in disgrace after striking a fellow officer in a brawl in March 1918. It was only Lord Beaverbrook’s intervention that saved him from a court-martial and he promptly sent John back to France to work on The Pageant of War, although the only completed painting to result from the period was Fraternity. John did, however, attend the Paris Peace Conference and the resulting Treaty of Versailles in 1919 (the peace treaty that officially ended the First World War) as Official Artist. He painted the portraits of several delegates but the commissioned group portrait of the main figures at the conference was never completed.

The years spent at Alderney Manor (1911-27) before, during and after the war represented the peak of John's artistic career. Everyone who was anyone seemingly wanted their portrait painted by John and he painted many, including…

…the writers Dylan Thomas, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw and Joyce Joyce; the poet, dramatist and winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, William Butler Yeats…

…the soldier and writer, T E Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia); and Lawrence’s ally and friend, the leader of the revolt against the Ottoman Empire (for which Lawrence had acted as British Military Liaison Officer during the Arab Revolt of 1916-18), and subsequently King of Greater Syria (1920) and the first King of Iraq (1921-33), The Emir Feisal …

…three British Prime Ministers: David Lloyd George (PM 1916-22), Ramsay MacDonald, (PM 1924, 1929-31 and 1931-35) and Sir Winston Churchill (PM 1940-45 and 1951-55) and Elizabeth Asquith, the writer and daughter of another, Herbert Asquith (PM 1908-16)…

…Field Marshal Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein…

…HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother…

…the society hostess and one of John’s many lovers, Lady Ottoline Morrell; the eccentric Italian heiress, muse, and patroness of the arts, Luisa, Marchesa di Roma; the actress and film star, Tallulah Bankhead; the Portuguese-born cellist, Guilhermina Suggia…

…and many others, including a controversial portrait of Lord Leverhulme, the philanthropist and industrialist founder of Lever Brothers (q.v.).

John painted several of his subjects on more than one occasion, for example, Dylan Thomas, W B Yeats and T E Lawrence. Of his second portrait of Elizabeth Asquith, Princess Antoine Bibesco, Mary Chamot, wrote in Country Life of the 1924 Royal Academy Summer Show at which this painting was exhibited, that it "has the force to make every other picture in the room look insipid, so dazzling is the contrast between the mysterious darkness of her eyes and hair and the shimmering brilliance of the white lace she wears over her head”.

Although well-known early in the century for his drawings and etchings, the bulk of John's later work consisted of portraits, some of the best of which were of his two wives and his children. He excelled at brilliant likenesses with vigorous characterisation without flattery and gained a reputation for the psychological insight of his portraits, an ability to portray some striking and usually unfamiliar aspect of his subject. Thomas Hardy, for example, remarked of his 1923 portrait, "I don't know if that's how I look, but that's how I feel".

John made a point of visiting most of his subjects before undertaking their portraits. He wrote, "The facility with which many artistic explorers…set to work at once in cold blood and without a moment's hesitation is astonishing…it implies a lack of sensibility. Without long study, trial, and many a failure, the secrets of Nature are apt to be withheld. As with a beautiful woman, courtship, not violence, wins the prize…".

He did not seek to convey his own attitude or ‘sit in moral judgement’ on the subjects he was portraying: "The portrait painter should allow no moral bias to affect his attitude to the sitter. The exploration of character should be left, with confidence, to the eye alone. Heaven knows what it may discover!".

And he typically completed a portrait in only several hours. As early as 1902 he had written, “I fancy portraits should be painted in an hour or two. The brush cannot linger over shabby and ephemeral garments”.

Many of his portraits were considered brutal. His 1907 portrait of William Butler Yeats, commissioned by Lady Gregory, outraged Yeats. John wrote privately that Yeats, although then aged 42, wanted to look like “the youthful Shelley in a lace collar” and he depicted him as "every inch the poet of the twilight" in an open-collared shirt, with red lips, glittering dark eyes, and a foppish lock of black hair falling over a white forehead. Yeats was appalled and said it made him appear, "a sheer tinker; drunken, unpleasant and disreputable".

His portrait of his one-time lover, Lady Ottoline Morrell (1919), is hardly flattering and, more famously, Lord Leverhulme was so upset with his portrait (1920) that he cut out the head (since only that part of the image could easily be hidden in his safe) but when the remainder of the picture was returned in error to John there was an international outcry over the desecration: in Hyde Park, London, art school students marched in protest carrying a giant, headless torso; in Paris, artists, models and picture framers called a 24 strike; and, in Italy, there was another 24 hour national strike of all artists, sculptors, architects, masons, art dealers and associated suppliers whilst, in Florence, an effigy of Lord Leverhulme was carried through the streets and ceremonially burned. John said that this incident was, "The grossest, most deliberately gratuitous insult I have ever received”. The portrait was later restored and now hangs in the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Cheshire.

This incident did, however, highlight John’s importance as the leading portrait painter of his generation with a major international reputation. He had largely rejected the developments of Modern Art but followed in the footsteps of John Singer Sargent (American, 1856-1925) as the portrait painter to the rich and famous. He eventually succeeded Sargent as England's most fashionable portrait painter although John saw himself somewhat differently, claiming, “I’m not a fashionable portrait painter, I much prefer painting my friends and people I happen to meet”. Both comments are true: John’s prodigious talent gained him access to the highest social circles and it was from these that many of his friends, acquaintances and sitters were drawn. As a ‘friend’ once said, "Augustus is no snob. He'd like everybody to have a title".

In 1927 John purchased Fryern Court in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, a 14thC friary turned farmhouse. The house, on the edge of the New Forest and the River Avon, became a ‘stopping-off’ point for artists travelling to the West Country from London and developed into more of an 'open house' rather than the bohemian 'commune' of Alderney Manor (which was demolished shortly after the Johns had left).

Cover, Time Magazine,
10 September 1928
Article: ‘Faces’

In the calmer environment of Fryern Court John became increasingly interested in politics and was active in the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and, somewhat ironically, supported the Voluntary Contraception League. He also lobbied members of Parliament on behalf of gypsy and travellers' rights and was honoured to be elected President of the Gypsy Lore Society in 1938.

John travelled widely within the UK and Ireland, to France (frequently) and within continental Europe. He went on a sketching holiday to Africa and lived and worked in America for a time. In 1911, he has written, “I think Jamaica would be a nice place to go and work” but it was not until late 1937 that he realised this ambition.

On first arrival in Jamaica, he stayed at the palatial Georgian hotel, the Mona Great House, a few miles outside Kingston and wrote with great enthusiasm about the Jamaican people and landscape. In a letter to a friend he said, “Nobody believes I'm serious when I tell them I am only interested in painting the coloured people” and, in his autobiography, Chiaroscuro, he refers to “…the prim black servants…I got some of them to sit for me”. One of his best known works from this period was Two Jamaican Girls which John painted soon after his arrival and most likely depicts two of the “prim black servants” at the Mona Great House to whom he referred.

John returned to England early in 1938 and held an exhibition in London in May-June of that year. It was a great success with almost all works sold, including Two Jamaican Girls for which the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, paid £450. It is still to be seen there and is one of the gallery’s most popular attractions.

In 1933, horrified by the rise of Fascism in Europe, John, with fellow sympathisers, Sir Henry Moore OM, CH (British, 1898-1986), Ben Nicholson OM (British, 1894-1982) and Eric Gill (British, 1882-1940), helped form the Artists International Association (AIA). This was a left-of-centre exhibiting society which embraced all styles of art, both Modernist and Traditional, its aim being the 'Unity of Artists for Peace, Democracy and Cultural Development' to be achieved though the mobilisation of an “army of artists” to oppose the advance of “philistine barbarism”. The AIA organised a number of exhibitions Against Fascism & War and remained active until 1971.

John reserved a particular hatred for General Franco of Spain and, in the early years of the Second World War, he presented several of his pictures to war funds and used his influence to free German and Austrian refugee artists interned by the British.

In 1942 John dabbled with the Social Credit Party (The Greenshirts) and, in I945, he joined with Benjamin Britten, E M Forster, George Orwell, Herbert Read and Osbert Sitwell in sponsoring the Freedom Defence Committee, “to defend those who are persecuted for exercising their rights to freedom of speech, writing and action”. This was an alternative to the National Council for Civil Liberties which had temporarily become a Communist Front organisation and refused to help anarchists, amongst whom John numbered himself.

After the War, with his reputation at its peak, John would still ‘cock a snook’ at the ‘establishment’ which had embraced him so completely. Even as a Senior Academician (RA) he could send a picture to the Royal Academy Exhibition followed by the remark, "I never asked them to admit me. I never sent them a picture until after they elected me."

John was increasingly drawn to anarchism, both as a philosophy and a social system. He had first come into contact with members of the anarchist movement in the anarchist clubs of Fitzrovia whilst a student at The Slade and later, in Paris in 1898, he often dined at an anarchist restaurant. Indeed, in 1902, he initially named his eldest son ‘Ravachol’ after an infamous French anarchist, before deciding on the less burdensome name of David. He elaborated his own beliefs in a number of radio broadcasts and in the Delphic Review, a magasine edited in Fordingbridge, arguing for the breakdown of nation states into small autonomous, self-supporting communities: “Gigantism is a disease” and pointing out that “Classical Athens was hardly bigger than Fordingbridge”.

Cover, Time Magazine,
31 May 1948
Article: ‘Gypsy John’

John wrote two autobiographies, Chiaroscuro: Fragments of Autobiography (1952) and Finishing Touches (published posthumously in 1964). He was a leading light of the New English Art Club (NEAC), where he chiefly exhibited. He was elected President of the National Portrait Gallery in 1914; an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1921, a full Academician (RA) in 1928 (he resigned in 1938 and rejoined in 1940), and Senior Academician in 1954; President of the Royal Cambrian Academy (RCamA) in 1934; President of the Gypsy Lore Society in 1938; and, in 1942, he was awarded the Order of Merit for Services to Art.

John and Dorelia lived out their later years at Fryern Court interspersed with occasional trips abroad or up to London where, even in his 80s, John would proceed to out-drink, out-party and out-flirt his considerably younger companions. And, although no longer a driving force in British art, he was still greatly revered, as demonstrated by the major exhibition of his work at the Royal Academy in 1954.

In the 1950s John had joined the pacifist Peace Pledge Union, and on 17 September 1961, he joined the Committee of 100's mass demonstration against nuclear weapons in London’s Trafalgar Square despite the fact that one of his sons, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Caspar John was First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff at the time.

Although he was recovering from an attack of thrombosis and suffering from what amounted to agoraphobia (an irrational fear of public or open spaces), John travelled up to London, against his doctor’s orders, to join this mass ‘sit-down’ demonstration. The police had banned the demonstration and deployed 4,000 men on the day. John hid, somewhat appropriately, inside the National Gallery until the demonstration began. He emerged at 5pm, walked nonchalantly across the road into Trafalgar Square and sat down amongst the unprecedented numbers who had gathered to protest - declaring that he would "go to prison if necessary". When Bertrand Russell later heard of John's attendance he described it as a "heroic gesture".

John died at Fryern Court one month later, continuing to work until his death. He is buried in the local cemetery.

Cover, Life Magazine,
14 January 1952
‘Famous Britons’

It has been said that “the world of English portraiture in the first half of the 20thC can be thought of as a triangle: with the photographer Cecil Beaton at one corner, the polished Royal portrait painters at the other, and Augustus John at the apex”.

Ever since he had left The Slade portraiture, both of a personal and a more ‘official’ nature, had been his main field of artistic endeavour, expressed both in oils and in the exceptionally beautiful line drawings for which he is also famous. His earlier work is characterised by his line drawings, notably of his contemporaries and his extended family, which are still thought to be among his finest work: in drawing with line rather than shadow, John’s attention and fascination was focussed on ‘the rhythm of outline’.

The bulk of John's work after the First World War, and in his later life, consisted of portraits of his two wives and children and literary and society figures, the ‘rich and famous’. A master technician, he demonstrated his skills in ‘official’ portraits marked by a vigorous and rhythmic style, fluent brush strokes and large areas of brilliant colour – and great insight into the character of his subjects; and in portraying his family as part of a brilliantly coloured, natural countryside untouched by the influences of the modern world.

John encompassed many contradictions. Publicly he was very much the bohemian yet he mixed in the highest social, political and artistic circles: he was a radical of anarchist sympathies yet an ‘establishment’ portraitist; a self-professed republican yet a painter of royalty and the aristocracy; he disliked politicians (and never voted in his life) yet painted major political figures; he was feted by the ‘Great and the Good’ yet a lifelong friend of the Roma; and personally, he was something of a monster, sexually-rapacious, self-obsessed, and immensely selfish. But set against this is the overarching fact and, arguably, redeeming feature that he could “…draw like a God” (Augustus and Gwen John Exhibition Catalogue, Tate Britain 2004) who became the greatest portraitist of his generation.

Michael Holroyd published a biography of John in 1975 and a new version of the biography was published in 1996, an indication of John’s enduring artistic legacy.