12 Works, January 4th is Augustus Edwin John's day, #004

Augustus John OM 1878–1961

Lyric Fantasy, c.1913–14

Oil paint and graphite on canvas

2380 × 4720 mm

Tate

This is one of four murals commissioned in 1909 to decorate the hall of the house in Chelsea. John designed the composition using his own family and friends as models, including at the right his wife Ida, who had recently died. It was painted from a full size drawing. John then painted out a figure at the centre, and suggested alterations to compensate.

Lyric Fantasy was not displayed, nor given its title, until 1940. John devoted his early career to these decorative murals, which he based on drawings and colour sketches. More on this work

Augustus Edwin John OM RA (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain.

At the age of seventeen he briefly attended the Tenby School of Art, then left Wales for London, studying at the Slade School of Art, University College London. He became the star pupil, and even before his graduation he was considered the most talented draughtsman of his generation.

Augustus Edwin John (1878–1961)

Moses and the Brazen Serpent, c. 1898

Oil on canvas

H 149.9 x W 213.4 cm

UCL Art Museum

In 1898, he won the Slade Prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent. John afterward studied independently in Paris.

James Dickson Innes (1887–1914)

Welsh Landscape, c. 911–1914

Oil on board

H 30.5 x W 38.1 cm

The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds

This painting is a view of Arenig Fawr in North Wales. Augustus John and his friend James Dickson Innes both worked around Arenig near Bala in 1911/1912. The mountain is the subject of pictures by Innes in the National Museum of Wales, Tate Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea and numerous other public collections. Arenig Fawr (2,800 ft) is the only mountain in Wales with twin peaks. More on this painting

Over a period of two years from around 1910 Augustus John and his friend James Dickson Innes painted in the Arenig valley, in particular one of Innes's favourite subjects, the mountain Arenig Fawr. 

Early in 1901, John married Ida Nettleship (1877–1907). The need to support Ida, led him to accept a post teaching art at the University of Liverpool. The couple had five sons. 

Augustus John OM 1878–1961

Robin, c.1912

Oil paint on canvas

451 × 305 mm

Tate

Robin was the third son of Augustus John and his wife Ida; he was eight when this portrait was painted. John often used his family as models, particularly for his less conventional work. In this intimate study, the boy’s long tousled hair suggests both freedom and ambiguity of gender. The close-up perspective also disturbs the boundaries of distance usually maintained in portraiture.

Robin’s consciousness of being scrutinised by his father could be interpreted as betraying resentment or unease. The two had a difficult relationship. Robin’s silences often infuriated John, who declared his son ‘hardly utters a word and radiates hostility’. More on this painting

Augustus John OM 1878–1961

Dorelia Standing before a Fence, c.1903–4

Oil paint on canvas

2020 × 1220 mm

Tate

Augustus John met Dorothy 'Dorelia' McNeill in early 1903 (lot 107) and later that year she moved in with the artist, his wife and his family, becoming John's muse, fulfilling his fantasies of womanhood. Michael Holroyd comments in Augustus John a Biography, The Years of Innocence, London, 1974, I, pp. 148-9: 'She was, of course, hypnotically beautiful - almost embarrassingly so, Will Rothenstein found: 'one could not take one's eyes off her'... In his portraiture, Augustus was like a stage director, assigning his subjects all sorts of dramatic roles. Dorelia, it seems, acquiesced in them, fitted each of them to perfection - mother, mistress, little girl, phantasm, goddess, seductress, wife. She became all things to him; she was everywoman'. In a rare display of bitterness Ida writes to Dorelia in 1905: 'You are the one outside who calls a man to apparent freedom and wild rocks and wind and air'. John's domestic life was an extraordinary tangle of passions and Dorelia continued to live in a ménage à trois with Augustus and Ida. She gave birth to two sons, Pyramus and Romilly, before Ida's death in 1907. More on Dorelia

Augustus John OM 1878–1961

Washing Day, c.1915

Oil paint on canvas

406 × 302 mm

Tate

Augustus John first became well known for his drawings, usually full length studies of women of his own family or of models in striking poses. In Provence in 1910 he began to paint small oil sketches of figures and landscapes, directly in bright colours onto wooden panels. There were intended as studies for paintings, but were commercially very successful. Ocasionally, as in 'Washing Day', he used the same procedure for a domestic subject. His mistress, Dorelia, the model for his best drawings, here wears the brightly coloured clothes she designed and made herself, and which set a fashion for a 'gipsy' style of dress. More on this painting

In February 1910, John visited and fell in love with the town of Martigues, in Provence. 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.

Augustus John OM, 1878–1961

Dorelia and the Children at Martigues, c. 1910

Oil, panel

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK

John was, throughout his life, particularly interested in the Romani people, Gypsies, and sought them out on his frequent travels around the United Kingdom and Europe, learning to speak various versions of their language. Later on he became the President of the Gypsy Lore Society, a position he held from 1937 until his death in 1961.

Augustus John OM, 1878–1961

A portrait study of a gypsy girl holding a large ewer

Oil on canvas

25" x 20"

Private collection

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 end result was to have been a huge mural for Lord Beaverbrook and the sketches and cartoon for this suggest that it might have become his greatest large-scale work. 

Augustus John OM, 1878–1961

Fraternity

Oil on canvas

Imperial War Museum

With his rank, Augustus John had the use of a staff car and a driver and loved patrolling the Vimy Front. It wasn’t long before he found a spot he thought would make a good subject — an old chateau converted into a battery position — for the final huge painting, Canadians Opposite Lens. 

He drew and painted sketches of Canadian soldiers for the huge commission he’d taken on. With his Fraternity: 3 Soldiers one of many great sketches.

Augustus John, (1878–1961)

The Canadians opposite Lens, before 1919 

Oil on canvas

Height: 3.7 m (12.1 ft); Width: 12 m (13.1 yd) Edit this at Wikidata

Canadian War Museum

Augustus John, (1878–1961)

Detail; The Canadians opposite Lens, before 1919 

Oil on canvas

Height: 3.7 m (12.1 ft); Width: 12 m (13.1 yd) Edit this at Wikidata

Canadian War Museum

Augustus John, (1878–1961)

Detail; The Canadians opposite Lens, before 1919 

Oil on canvas

Height: 3.7 m (12.1 ft); Width: 12 m (13.1 yd) Edit this at Wikidata

Canadian War Museum

After two months in France he was sent home in disgrace after taking part in a brawl. 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 was Fraternity. 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.

Although known early in the century for his drawings and etchings, the bulk of John's later work consisted of portraits. Those of his two wives and his children were regarded as among his best. He was known for the psychological insight of his portraits, many of which were considered "cruel" for the truth of the depiction.

Augustus John OM, 1878–1961

Madame Suggia, c. 1920–3

Oil paint on canvas

1867 × 1651 mm

Tate

Guilhermina Suggia was Portuguese, but lived in London from 1914. She was a well-known musician, particularly because a female cello soloist was then a rarity. The portrait was begun for the newspaper proprietor Edward Hudson, who had given Suggia the Montagnana cello that she plays. However the commission lapsed, and John continued the painting for himself. He started again twice, each time choosing a dress of a different colour, a larger canvas and a pose in more extreme profile. More on this painting

By the 1920s John was Britain's leading portrait painter. John painted many distinguished contemporaries, including T. E. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Lady Gregory, Tallulah Bankhead, George Bernard Shaw, the cellist Guilhermina Suggia, the Marchesa Casati and Elizabeth Bibesco. Perhaps his most famous portrait is of his fellow-countryman, Dylan Thomas, whom he introduced to Caitlin Macnamara, his sometime lover who later became Thomas' wife. Portraits of Dylan Thomas by John are held by the National Museum Wales and the National Portrait Gallery.

It was said that after the war his powers diminished as his bravura technique became sketchier. 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. 

He continued to work up until his death. His last work being a studio mural in three parts, a French peasant in a yellow waistcoat playing a hurdy-gurdy while coming down a village street. More on Augustus Edwin John

Artist John on a 1928 Time magazine cover

Published 10 September 1928

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