Augustus Edwin John R.A. (1878-1961)

Catalogue Note

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 and was acclaimed in London as the equal to Matisse and Gauguin. He was equally famous for his scandalous bohemian lifestyle. Never short on patrons, John became a fashionable celebrity artist, cultivating the image of the wild and free artistic spirit, drawing inspiration from the gypsy lifestyle and culture.

Born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, the younger brother of the artist Gwen John, he studied at the Slade School of Art. Despite being described as a quiet, methodical student, he was hailed as the most brilliant draughtsman of his generation. He developed a lifelong interest in the Romany way of life, taking to living in a caravan with his wife, mistress and several children for many years. He married his first wife, Ida Nettleship in 1900, and met his mistress Dorelia McNeill in 1902 (she became his second wife in 1907, after Ida's death). The etching The Pheasant in the British Council Collection is an intimate work made shortly after he first met Dorelia, who was then working as a legal secretary. They launched into a passionate affair ('The smell of you is in my nostrils and it will never go and I am sick of love for you...' letter from AJ to Dorelia), and Ida agreed to a menage-a-trois, with Ida bearing him five children, Dorelia two. The Romany way of life suited his desire to break free from the constraints of late Victorian mores; but also places him within an imaginative trajectory in English arts and letters - from George Borrow to Eric Gill to the Ruralists - of individuals attracted to alternative ways of living, removed from the social structures of the predominantly urban classes. A larger painting of Dorelia in a Feathered Hat (1903-4) is in the collection of National Museum Wales

In 1927 the John clan moved to Fryern Court, Fordingbridge, which became a kind of open house for travelling artists. In his later life and as his artistic career entered its twilight phase, Augustus became increasingly interested in politics, supporting the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and pushing government officials on the topic of travellers' rights.