Augustus John

Welsh painter and etcher

• Born: January 4, 1878
• Birthplace: Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales
• Died: October 31, 1961
• Place of death: Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England

A talented portrait painter, an accomplished etcher, and a notorious bohemian, John became one of the best-known British artists in the twentieth century. Some of his best work portrayed humble people, namely the Roma of Great Britain.

Early Life

Augustus John was born the third child (out of five) of Edwin William and Augusta (née Smith) John. His mother died six years later, and because his father, a lawyer, was preoccupied with his legal practice, John suffered a lonely and unhappy childhood. He attended a few local schools without much enthusiasm until, in 1894, he became determined to be an artist and left Wales for the Slade School of Art in London.

John originally impressed his teachers as a hardworking and methodical pupil but not a particularly outstanding one. In the summer of 1897, however, he received a head injury while swimming and returned to school the following fall a man transformed. His work began to demonstrate a brilliance that had not been apparent earlier, and he rapidly became a near legend among his teachers and fellow students. His rising stature was confirmed in 1898, when he won a school-wide competition in composition with a work entitled Moses and the Brazen Serpent.

He used the money he won in this contest to travel to Amsterdam in the autumn of 1898 to visit a Rembrandt exhibition. This was the first of several trips to the Continent that John would make during his formative years. The next year, 1899, he used the money he had earned from his first public exhibit at the Carfax Gallery in London to finance a journey to France, where he spent time at Vattetot-sur-mer and Paris. In the French capital, he studied the work of Honoré Daumier and devoted his days at the Louvre to intense reflection on the work of the masters. The influence of such masters as Rembrandt was apparent in his work at the time and prompted one of his contemporaries to comment that his work was the best since the Renaissance.

It was during this trip to Paris that John began to cultivate the bohemian image he would retain for the rest of his life. Influenced by the eccentric fashions of French artists and by his interest in the Roma (Gypsies), he cultivated quite a striking appearance. People who knew him at the time have described a tall, graceful young man with long hair and large violet eyes. He frequently wore earrings, a sailor’s shirt, and a large, floppy hat, and, in general, impressed acquaintances as a flamboyant and charismatic individual. One did not soon forget a meeting with this colorful and interesting young man.

In 1901, John married Ida Nettleship, the daughter of the painter John Trivett Nettleship. Before she died in 1907, she bore John five sons. He had also met Dorothy (Dorelia) McNeil in 1903, and she had one son by John before Ida’s death and two daughters by him afterward. John would produce several more illegitimate children by other women during the course of his life, but he would nevertheless retain a very close relationship with Dorelia until his death.

Life’s Work

John worked as an art instructor at the University of Liverpool during 1901 and 1902. During this short period, John developed several interests that would remain with him for the rest of his life. For example, John began to etch while he was at Liverpool. Heavily influenced by the Rembrandt tradition, the subjects of his etchings ranged from the Roma and slum dwellers to well-known individuals such as William Butler Yeats. He also began his portrait practice during this time and produced one of his most famous works in this genre in 1902, Merekli (a portrait of his wife, Ida). This portrait established the tradition of the “John girl” (a dark haired and vivacious woman draped in a bright-colored and provocative dress), one that would reappear many times in his later paintings. John also met John Sampson, an expert in Roma lore, at Liverpool and cultivated through him what would prove to be a lifetime interest in the Roma and their customs. He mastered their difficult language, adopted their fashions, used them as the subjects of numerous paintings and etchings, befriended many of them, and often acted as their advocate when they ran afoul of the authorities. In recognition for his long and passionate attachment to the Roma of England, John was elected president of the Gypsy Lore Society in 1937.

In 1903, John and his family moved to Matching Green in Essex and began his famous habit of launching “caravans,” consisting of himself and assorted friends and family members, into the British countryside in search of Roma, landscapes, and other interesting subjects to draw and paint. These caravans rapidly assumed an international character as John and his ever-changing entourage explored southern France, Spain, and Italy as well as every corner of Great Britain and Ireland. As he wandered around England and the Continent, his artistic reputation continued to soar. Exhibitions of his etchings and paintings, such as the one held at the Chenil Gallery in Chelsea during 1908, attracted national attention and portrait commissions literally poured in from individuals from all walks of life. Although academic critics had yet to be won over (and many never would be), the general British public idolized him for his romantic appearance and lifestyle, his simple and powerful drawings, and his colorful, eye-catching paintings.

John was rejected for active military service during World War I for physical reasons, but he obtained the position of official artist for the overseas Canadian forces and achieved the rank of major. In this capacity he produced a design for the Canadian War Memorial and many portraits of various allied political and military leaders, including Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George of Great Britain. He also received an invitation to attend the postwar Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 and painted portraits of most of the important participants. At about the same time, he provided most of the illustrations for the original edition of T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926), including a portrait of Lawrence himself.

Several authorities argue that the quality of John’s work declined after World War I. Perhaps some of his paintings from the postwar period, such as In Memoriam Amedeo Modigliani (1920), do not compare favorably with his earlier work, but others, such as Joseph Hone (1932) and Sir Matthew Smith (1944), are powerful and striking portraits and are as good as anything he produced during his long career. John’s artistic production had always been erratic in terms of quality, and this characteristic merely seems to have become more pronounced after 1918.

It does not, however, seem to have affected his public reputation to any degree. Following an extraordinarily successful show at the Alpine Club Gallery in London in 1921, John was elected an associate member of the Royal Academy and, in 1928, was promoted to full membership. He resigned in protest in 1938 when the Academy refused to allow his friend and fellow artist Wyndham Lewis to show a painting in the Academy’s annual exhibit. In February, 1940, however, the Academy reelected him as a member, only the third time in its history that it restored a resigned member. In this period, he also was a member of the New English Art Club; a fellow of University College, London; president of the Society of Mural Painters; and trustee of the Tate Gallery (1933-1961). He received the Order of Merit in 1942.

In addition to continuing his artistic work, John also began to publish some nonfiction in the 1930’s. He contributed articles to the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society and several short pieces on painting to various British art journals. He also wrote a two-volume autobiography. The first volume, entitled Chiaroscuro: Fragments of Autobiography , appeared in 1952 while the second, Finishing Touches , was published posthumously in 1964.

Although he continued to paint portraits of both the famous (King Faisal, Queen Elizabeth, and many others) and the anonymous, John became increasingly interested in what he called “imaginative painting.” This attempt to paint without any reference to visual nature went against John’s natural talents as an observer of reality and did not produce any notable results. In fact, John abandoned his planned grand culmination of this phase, a huge triptych entitled Les Saintes-Maries de la Mer with Sainte Sara l’Egyptienne in 1961, after recognizing that it would never work. John died soon thereafter, on October 31, at his home, Fryern Court, in Fordingbridge, Hampshire.

Significance

John’s reputation during his lifetime appears in retrospect to have been a bit inflated. He was an outstanding draftsman and portraitist, but his expeditions into other realms of artistic expression failed to impress knowledgeable critics. However, within the boundaries of his expertise, he was a master. His portraits, for example, are brilliantly designed and produce a free and forceful, yet sensitive, appreciation of their subjects. Nor did he limit his talents to individuals with money. Some of his best work portrayed humble people who caught his interest, such as his numerous Roma paintings or the series of West Indian slum-dweller portraits he presented at a show at Arthur Tooth’s Gallery in 1939.

John’s fame also rested as much on his personality and public image as it did on his actual work. His colorful dress and personal life presented the image of the eccentric artist that many members of the general public seemed to desire. His generous nature also contributed to his popularity. For example, when Professor Oliver Elton retired from the University of Liverpool in 1926, his literature students wanted John to paint the beloved professor’s portrait. They did not, however, have the money to meet John’s standard fee, so he accepted the small amount of cash they did manage to raise and painted the portrait anyway. The finished product was one of John’s best. This combination of eccentricity and generosity, along with his talent for producing the type of art that the public loves best portraits and landscapes contributed to the creation of his near-legendary reputation during his lifetime. If it has diminished somewhat since his death, one can attribute the change, at least in part, to the natural revision that legends in all fields undergo over the course of time.

Bibliography

Earp, T. W. Augustus John. London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1934. This book, written while John was still alive, deals largely with his work to 1920. Biographical details are scanty, and its assessment of John’s art is highly favorable.

Gaunt, William. A Concise History of English Painting. New York: Praeger, 1964. Although the section on John is very brief, it accurately summarizes the major achievements in his career and places him within the context of British art during the twentieth century.

Harris, Frank. Contemporary Portraits: Third Series. New York: Kraus, 1920. This book contains a short, impressionistic chapter on John that serves as a good source for information on the artist’s personality and eccentric characteristics.

Holroyd, Michael. The Art of Augustus John. London: Secker and Warburg, 1974. A scholarly and balanced treatment of John’s work by a foremost authority on the artist.

Jenkins, David Fraser, and Chris Stephens. Gwen John and Augustus John. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004. Examines the lives and work of John and his sister, Gwen John, an artist whose work has been rediscovered and praised while her brother’s artistic reputation suffered.

John, Augustus. Chiaroscuro: Fragments of Autobiography. London: Jonathan Cape, 1952.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Finishing Touches. London: Jonathan Cape, 1964. Parts of this two-part autobiography are beautifully written and intelligent, and other parts are ponderous and confused.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Drawings of Augustus John. Edited by Stephen Longstreet. Alhambra, Calif.: Borden, 1967. An excellent collection of John’s pen and pencil drawings, this collection shows the artist at his best.

Rothenstein, John. Augustus John. New York: Oxford University Press, 1944. A generally critical study of John’s work by the former director of the Tate Gallery. The author makes the point that John’s reputation with the public was based more on his colorful image than on his abilities.