Augustus John OM RA
1878 - 1961
Augustus John was born in Tenby, the younger son and third of four children, his father a solicitor. Although she died when he was six, his mother's love of drawing was not lost on Augustus or his sister, Gwen. He went to Tenby School of Art and the Slade School, becoming the star pupil of Henry Tonks and the most famous artist of his generation in the Age of Augustus John, as Virginia Woolf had it. For over a decade from 1898, John rode the crest of the etching revival, producing a series of Rembrandt-influenced etchings of extraordinary quality. In 1902 he set up an art school with William Orpen in Chelsea, where he later had a studio and house built. John had a close rapport with Gypsy Travellers, and lived a Bohemian traveller's life with his wife Ida and mistress Dorelia, before settling, after Ida's death, in Poole, later moving to Hampshire. In World War I, billeted with and recording in pen and paint the activities of Canadian troops, John characteristically refused to shave off his signature beard, saying he was the only serving soldier besides the King allowed to retain one. One of the leading portrait painters of his day, with a host of wealthy and famous subjects and friends, John aspired also to be a great painter of figurative subjects, although his temperament rarely allowed him to finish such schemes successfully. Although elected to the Royal Academy in 1928, he resigned in 1938 in protest at the
Augustus John was born in Tenby, the younger son and third of four children, his father a solicitor. Although she died when he was six, his mother's love of drawing was not lost on Augustus or his sister, Gwen. He went to Tenby School of Art and the Slade School, becoming the star pupil of Henry Tonks and the most famous artist of his generation in the Age of Augustus John, as Virginia Woolf had it. For over a decade from 1898, John rode the crest of the etching revival, producing a series of Rembrandt-influenced etchings of extraordinary quality. In 1902 he set up an art school with William Orpen in Chelsea, where he later had a studio and house built. John had a close rapport with Gypsy Travellers, and lived a Bohemian traveller's life with his wife Ida and mistress Dorelia, before settling, after Ida's death, in Poole, later moving to Hampshire. In World War I, billeted with and recording in pen and paint the activities of Canadian troops, John characteristically refused to shave off his signature beard, saying he was the only serving soldier besides the King allowed to retain one. One of the leading portrait painters of his day, with a host of wealthy and famous subjects and friends, John aspired also to be a great painter of figurative subjects, although his temperament rarely allowed him to finish such schemes successfully. Although elected to the Royal Academy in 1928, he resigned in 1938 in protest at the
rejection of Wyndham Lewis's portrait of T.S. Eliot from the Summer Exhibition. No British artist had been able to draw so beautifully since, perhaps, Gainsborough and Romney, and perhaps Millais, and none equalled him until Hockney's maturing in the late 1960s. His posthumous reputation has seen his sister become the more prized artist, but he remains a towering genius of British art, and up to the late 1920s, when his work started to decline, he was, after Picasso and Matisse, just about the most celebrated artist in the world.
4 ITEMS
