Augustus John (129 page)

49
  ‘The Slade Animal Land’, a notebook of caricatures of staff and students at the Slade in 1898, shows the BEARDGION, a cartoon of Augustus John by Logic Whiteway with the explanatory caption: ‘This simple creature is so accomplished that, according to the Tonk, Michael Angelo isn’t in it.’ See National Library of Scotland Acc. 3969 1965.

50
  Gwen also won a certificate for figure drawing, while Augustus after his second year was awarded a second certificate for advanced antique drawing, a £3 prize for the study of a standing male nude, a certificate for head painting, and a £6
prize for figure painting.

51
  
Men and Memories
Volume I p. 333.

52
  Mary Taubman
Gwen John
(1985), p. 15.

53
  See John’s Introduction to the Catalogue of Drawings by Ulrica Forbes, Walker’s Galleries, 118 New Bond Street, London, 17 October 1952.

54
  ‘A Note on Drawing’, from
Augustus John: Drawings
(ed. Lillian Browse 1941), p. 10.

55
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 46.

56
  
Augustus John: Studies for Compositions
(National Museum of Wales 1978) pls. 1–3. The text for ‘Moses and the Brazen Serpent’ came from Numbers 21:9. ‘And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.’ The painting is owned by the Slade School.

57
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 48.

58
  
Rude Assignment
p. 119.

59
  
Men and Memories
Volume I p. 333.

60
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 36.

61
  
Ibid.
p. 27.

62
  Jack Nettleship wrote a biography of Browning. One of his brothers, Henry, was Corpus Professor of Latin at Oxford; another, Richard, was a Fellow
and Tutor at Balliol, and a friend of Benjamin Jowett; and the third, Edward, a prominent oculist. Jack regretted not having done the lions in Trafalgar Square, of which, he believed, he could have made a far better job than Sir Edwin Landseer.

63
  Ethel Nettleship to Caspar John, 27 June 1951. NLW MS 22790D fols. 34–9·

64
  W. B. Yeats
Autobiographies
(1955), p. 271.

65
  See NLW MS 22798B fols. 11–15, 55–71.

66
  Ada Nettleship’s maiden name was Hinton, and she was the sister of James Hinton who wrote an enormous philosophical work and then, according to David John, went off his head. ‘I had an idea of “discovering” him,’ Romilly John records (1 August 1972), ‘but have always been completely baffled after reading two sentences and had to start again, and so on indefinitely. James Hinton’s son was the author of a book on the fourth dimension, involving the construction by the reader of hundreds of cubes with differently coloured surfaces and edges.’

67
  Ethel Nettleship to Caspar John, 27 June 1951. NLW MS 22790D fols. 34–5·

68
  W. B. Yeats
Autobiographies
p. 193.

69
  
Ibid.

70
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 48.

71
  This synopsis was done for Hubert Alexander, who had got to know Augustus through Dorelia McNeill. In the 1920s Alexander had turned publisher and approached John for his memoirs. ‘I’ve been thinking of the book and will send you shortly a provisional synopsis,’ John wrote to him on 21 February 1923. Alexander believes he may have got the synopsis about 1927, but since there is a holograph synopsis among Augustus’s papers, it may never have been sent. Certainly by 1932 negotiations were still continuing and Sir Charles Reilly remembered that year ‘a publisher came down [to Fryern Court] and offered him great sums for his autobiography, finally reaching £13,000 [equivalent to well over £400,000 in 1996] the sum I heard him say Lady Oxford got for hers, but he nobly turned it down.’

72
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 48.

73
  
Finishing Touches
p. 40.

74
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 147. In 1941 Sir John Rothenstein came across this picture at the Leger Galleries, bought it for the Tate Gallery, and showed it to John for identification. At first he failed to recognize it, but later did acknowledge it to be his. In his
Modern English Painters,
Rothenstein described it as a rather fumbling and pedestrian essay and, though probably a fair example of his painting at this time, laboured, niggling in form, hardly modelled at all. But John himself, on reading this, objected: ‘The “Old Lady’s” head is very well modelled: the hands unfinished yet expressive. She couldn’t move them easily.’

75
  Ida Nettleship to Ada Nettleship, 18 September 1898. NLW MS 22798B fols. 18–19.

76
  Letter from Ida Nettleship to her mother n.d. NLW MS 22798B fols. 16–17.

77
  Ida Nettleship to Ada Nettleship, 20 September 1898. NLW MS 22798B fols. 20–1.

78
  Ida Nettleship to Ada Nettleship, December 1898. NLW MS 22798B fols. 30–1.

79
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 250.

80
  Ida Nettleship to Ada Nettleship n.d. (late September 1898). NLW MS 227988 fols. 22–4.

81
  Gwen John to Michel Salaman n.d. (spring 1899). NLW MS 14930C.

82
  Fothergill’s inn was the Spread Eagle at Thame in which, for a time,
Augustus’s son Romilly worked, and for which Dora Carrington painted an inn sign (now gone). He was the author of
Confessions of an Innkeeper, John Fothergill’s Cookery Book, The Art of James Dickson Innes, My Three Inns,
etc.

83
  Rothenstein had first heard of Ibsen through Conder, and in his
Men and Memories
(Volume I p. 56) writes: ‘We were all mesmerised by Ibsen in those days.’ The picture, now in the Tate Gallery, expresses the tension of Act III of
The Doll’s House
when Mrs Linden and Krogstad are listening for the end of the dance upstairs. Subsequently it became famous as a ‘problem picture’ mainly perhaps on account of its dark colour. ‘I am portrayed standing at the foot of a staircase upon which Alice has unaccountably seated herself,’ John wrote in his Introduction to the Catalogue of the Sir William Rothenstein Memorial Exhibition at the Tate Gallery (5 May–4 June 1950). ‘I appear to be ready for the road, for I am carrying a mackintosh on my arm and am shod and hatted. But Alice seems to hesitate. Can she have changed her mind at the last moment?… Perhaps the weather had changed for the worse...’ The picture, painted between June and October 1899, was exhibited in the British section of the Paris Exhibition in 1900, where it won a silver medal.

84
  Introduction to the William Rothenstein Memorial Exhibition Catalogue, Tate Gallery (May–June 1950).

85
  
Men and Memories
Volume I p. 352.

86
  
Horizon
Volume III No. 18 (June 1941), p. 400.

87
  Oscar Wilde to William Rothenstein, 4 October 1899. See
The Letters of Oscar Wilde
(ed. Rupert Hart-Davis 1962), p. 811.

88
  John Rothenstein
Modern English Painters,
Volume I p. 179. Rothenstein instances ‘The Rustic Idyll’ of about 1903 as having been done under the immediate impact of Daumier. This work – possibly watercolour on dampened cartridge – is now in the Tate Gallery, and is called ‘Rustic Scene’. It has an unusual texture – soft, blurred contours – and is more dramatic than most of John’s work. ‘“The Rustic Idyll” I remember well,’ John wrote to the Tate Gallery (16 March 1956). ‘It is one of several pastels I did soon after leaving the Slade. Though hardly an Idyll, it has dramatic character… I don’t consider it has merit as a
pastel.’

89
  Everett, who had been baptized Herbert, registered at the Slade as Henry Everett, but he always called himself John Everett. He added to the confusion by marrying his cousin – Mrs Everett’s niece – Kathleen, who altered her Christian name fractionally to Katherine. A dedicated marine painter, John Everett never sold a marine painting during his life, but bequeathed them all (1,700 oils and a larger number of drawings and engravings) to the National Maritime Museum, which held a memorial exhibition of his work in 1964.

90
  
Men and Memories
Volume I p. 352.

91
  
Ibid.

92
  Rothenstein’s portrait of Augustus is at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

93
  Augustus John to Michel Salaman, February 1900. NLW MS 14928D.

94
  Gwen John seems to have been living at 122 Gower Street illegally and without furniture. The house was officially inhabited by a woman called Annie Machew, who since October 1898 had paid no rates. The rating authorities who attempted to collect the money owing to them throughout 1900 reported that there were ‘no effects’ there. For this reason the house does not appear in
Kelly’s Post Office Directory
until three years later, when it had been taken over by the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks.

95
  Three of Conder’s paintings of Swanage are in the Tate Gallery.

96
  What became of the large decoration is not known, though a number of
small versions of the subject exist, showing the influence of Goya and Delacroix. One is an oil which belonged to Humphrey Brooke, Secretary of the Royal Academy (1952–68); another, a wash drawing in the Quinn Collection in New York, was sold by the Fine Art Society at the Slade Centenary Show (autumn 1971); a third, a pen and wash drawing, is in the Tate Gallery (reproduced in
Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture
Volume I 1964, pl. 51).

97
  
Horizon
Volume III No. 18 (June 1941), p. 401.

98
  Letter from Augustus John to Michel Salaman n.d. NLW MS 14928D.

99
  
Horizon
Volume III No. 18 (June 1941), p. 401.

100
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 38.

101
  NLW MS 19645C.

102
  John’s drawing of the Château de Polignac, done with black crayon on white paper and very Flemish in its atmosphere, is now in the Manchester Art Galleries. It is reproduced in
Augustus John. Fifty-two drawings
(1957), pl. 5.

103
  
Men and Memories
Volume I p. 358.

104
  Some pages from his sketchbook at this time were exhibited at the Mercury Gallery, London, 15 June 1967–10 February 1968.

105
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 49.

106
  E. Fox-Pitt ‘From Stomacher to Stomach’ (unpublished autobiography).

107
  
Men and Memories
Volume II p. I.

CHAPTER III: LOVE FOR ART’S SAKE

1
  From an essay Osbert Sitwell did not include in
A Free House.
It will be found in André Theuriet
Jules Bastien-Lepage & his Art
(1892), pp. 139–40. See also Malcolm Easton
Augustus John
(1970).

2
  Alfred Thornton
Fifty Years of the New English Art Club
(1935).

3
  Augustus John to Michel Salaman n.d. (spring 1900). NLW MS 14928D.

4
  
Cambridge Review
(March 1922).

5
  Quentin Bell
Victorian Artists
(1967), p. 91.

6
  
The English Review
(January 1912).

7
  
The Burlington Magazine
(February 1916).

8
  
New Age
(28 May 1914).

9
  Letter from Augustus John to Lady Ottoline Morrell, 5 August 1910. This correspondence is at the University of Texas, Austin.

10
  This and other unpublished Orpen letters were owned by Miriam Benkovitz, the biographer of Ronald Firbank.

11
  Herbert Jackson was Professor Walter Raleigh’s brother-in-law, while D. S. MacColl was connected by marriage to Oliver Elton, who succeeded Raleigh as Professor of Modern Literature at Liverpool.

12
  Dora E. Yates
My Gypsy Days
(1953), p. 74.

13
  Anthony Sampson ‘Scholar Gipsy. The Quest for a Family Secret’ (unpublished), Chapter 2.

14
  
Lytton Strachey by Himself
(ed. Michael Holroyd, 1994 edn), p. 104.

15
  Augustus John to Michel Salaman n.d. (April 1900). NLW MS 14928D fol. 39·

16
  This portrait, which hung in Liverpool University Dining Club, was later the cause of a historic decision. First exhibited at the NEAC in the Winter Show of 1903, it was to have been awarded the Gold Medal for Painting at the International Exhibition at St Louis, Missouri, in the following year. Learning that this prize was to go to so young and relatively obscure an artist, the President of the Royal Academy and the English members of
the international jury took the astonishing step of withdrawing, without explanation, the entire British section.

17
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 60.

18
  Augustus John to Will Rothenstein, 9 March 1902. He continues: ‘I felt inclined to add my patch of homemade sienna in reference to the past.’

19
  Anthony Sampson ‘Scholar Gipsy. The Quest for a Family Secret’ Chapter 2.

20
  
The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh 1879–1922
(ed. Lady Raleigh 1926), Volume II p. 333.

21
  Geoffrey Keynes
The Gates of Memory
(1981), p. 112.

22
  Augustus John to John Sampson n.d. (
c.
1914). NLW MS 21459E fol. 50.

23
  Augustus John to John Sampson, 22 October 1902. NLW MS 21459E fols. 2–3.