Augustus John (128 page)

15
  Now in the Tenby Museum. It is a copy of a David Cox. The picture of cattle is owned by Muriel Matthews, Augusta’s American granddaughter.

16
  Alison Thomas
Portraits of Women
(1994), p. 71.

17
  The death certificate inaccurately gives her age as thirty-four.

18
  William John died of cerebral softerina on 6 July 1884.

19
  Aunt Leah went straight to the United States, where she picked up a slight American accent and a large band of disciples. Aunt Rosina’s travels were
more circuitous, and her destinations always preceded by a series of brown-paper parcels. Sustained by a diet of over-ripe fruit and protected by a dense fur muff, she set off for Switzerland from where she wrote a number of letters in purple ink testifying to her brief enthusiasm for Dr Coué, who believed that if people repeated ‘Every day in every way I am getting better and better’ many thousands of times, the world might become a more cheerful place. From here she went to Japan, where she collected a miniature Japanese maid, and later, improbably passing through Mason, Nevada, married Owen H. Bott, a druggist with two sons. Under the pitiless blue of the Californian skies, she caught up with Winifred, terrifying her children with her cottonwool hair, her humped back and restless scuttling from place to place.

20
  Gwen, Augustus and Winifred were baptized at St Mary’s Church, Tenby, on 21 January 1886.

21
  William John’s will is dated 14 June 1881, a little over three years before his death from a disease that would have made him legally incompetent.

22
  NLW MS 22782D fols. 115–16.

23
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 28. All page numbers are taken from the first Jonathan Cape editions of
Chiaroscuro
and
Finishing Touches
(1952 and 1964). The two books were republished, with an additional chapter, under the title
Autobiography
in 1975.

24
  Letter to the author, 18 October 1968.

25
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 25.

26
  Later the Sea Beach Hotel, Tenby.

27
  This building (the original house of which was built by Edward Morgan in the 1830s) was later converted into a public library. In the cemented grounds two trees were planted, an oak in memory of Augustus, and a birch in memory of Gwen. Greenhill School later moved to the outskirts of Tenby.

28
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 36.

29
  At the junction with South Cliff Street. Later the property became the Hallsville Hotel.

30
  Letter to the author, 18 October 1968.

31
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 37.

32
  
Ibid.
p. 19.

33
  
Ibid.
pp. 31–2.

34
  Thornton John to Augustus John, 3 February 1959. NLW MS 22782D fols. 115–16.

35
  Augustus John to Caspar John, 16 August 1952. NLW 22775C fol. 7.

36
  Augustus John to John Davenport n.d. (late 1940s). NLW MS 21585E.

37
  Winifred John to Augustus John, 8 January 1906. NLW MS 22782D fol. 124.

38
  Winifred John to Augustus John, 3 March 1956. NLW MS 22782D fol. 125.

39
  Cecily Langdale
Gwen John
(1987) p. 115.

40
  Anthony d’Offay
Gwen John: 1876–1939
(1982).

41
  Thornton John to Augustus John, 3 March 1948. NLW MS 22782D fol. 111.

42
  Thornton John to Gwen John, 7 September 1935. NLW MS 22307C fol. 88.

43
  Winifred John to Gwen John, 10 July 1910. NLW MS 22307C fols. 122–3.

44
  Thornton John to Gwen John, 14 July 1920. NLW MS 22307C fols. 71–2.

45
  Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, summer 1910. NLW MS 21368D fol. 46.

46
  Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 1908. NLW MS 21468D fol. 25.

47
  Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan
Gwen John. Papers at the National Library of Wales
(1988), p. 11.

48
  Augustus John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (July 1908). NLW MS 22776D fols. 89–90.

49
  Letter to the author from Darsie Japp, 13 December 1968.

50
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 12.

51
  Augustus John to Bill Duncalf, 22 May 1959 (privately owned).

52
  Augustus John to John Sampson, n.d. (
c
. 1912). NLW MS 21459E fol. 46.

53
  Augustus John to John Sampson, 13 March 1912. NLW MS 21459E, fol.44.

54
  Entry for 22 June 1919 in
The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner
(ed. Claire Harman 1994), p. 37.

55
  Augustus John to Ada Nettleship n.d. NLW MS 22775C fol. 81.

56
  The word
petulengro
means horseshoe-maker or smith. It was T. W. Thompson who first identified Borrow’s Jaspar Petulengro with a certain Ambrose Smith.

57
  William Rothenstein to Max Beerbohm, 24 July 1941. Quoted in Robert Speaight’s
William Rothenstein
(1962), p. 402.

58
  
Evening Standard
(19 January 1929).

59
  
Horizon
Volume XIX No. 112 (April 1949), p. 295.

60
  Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan
Gwen John. Papers at the National Library of Wales,
p. 9.

61
  Letter to the author, 18 October 1968.

62
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 35.

63
  
Evening Standard
(19 January 1929).

CHAPTER II: ‘SLADE SCHOOL INGENIOUS’

1
  BBC talk first transmitted on 17 November 1967. Augustus’s eyes were actually blue.

2
  George Charlton ‘The Slade School of Fine Art’
The Studio
(October 1946).

3
  In his inaugural lecture,
Systems of Art Education,
Poynter had attacked the current methods of English art teaching in which ‘a trivial minuteness of detail [was] considered of more importance than a sound and thorough grounding in the knowledge of form’, and only at the end of the course was the student allowed to do what he should ‘have been set to do the first day he entered the school, that is to make studies from the living model’. He himself intended to ‘impress but one lesson upon the students, that constant study from the life-model is the only means they have of arriving at a comprehension of the beauty in nature...’ See Edward Poynter
Lectures on Art
(1879) and also Andrew Forge
The Slade 1871–1960.

4
  
Men and Memories
Volume I (1931), pp. 22–5.

5
  George Charlton ‘The Slade School of Fine Art’
The Studio
(October 1946).

6
  
Horizon
Volume III No. 18 (June 1941), p. 394.

7
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 41.

8
  Some of John’s music hall sketches made at the Alhambra were exhibited at the Mercury Gallery, London (15 January–10 February 1968). John also made a portrait of Arthur Roberts dated, almost certainly inaccurately, 1895, now in the National Portrait Gallery. ‘I consider him [Arthur Roberts] about the most important buffoon England has ever produced – a born comedian and a most accomplished artist,’ he wrote to the National Portrait Gallery (14 May 1929). In Henry Savage’s autobiography,
The Receding Shore,
there is a brief mention of John doing a portrait of Arthur Roberts in about 1922.

9
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 42.

10
  
Ibid.
p. 44.

11
  
Finishing Touches
p. 29.

12
  Letter to the author, 1969.

13
  Letter to Ursula Tyrwhitt. Augustus’s letters to Ursula Tyrwhitt are at the National Library of Wales, NLW MS 19645C; and so are Gwen John’s letters to Ursula Tyrwhitt, NLW MS 21468D.

14
  
Famous People, No. 31 of a series of 50. Illustrated by Angus McBride and described by Virginia Shankland. A secondary John legend involved Augustus’s son Caspar who dived on to a rock in 1930 and emerged from the waves a potential admiral.

15
  
Daily Telegraph
(1 November 1961).

16
  
Augustus John: Studies for Compositions. Centenary Exhibition National Museum of Wales 1978.

17
  Spencer Gore to Doman Turner, 25 January 1909. See John Rothenstein
Modern English Painters
Volume I
Sickert to Smith
(1976 edn), p. 177.

18
  
Evening Standard
(19 January 1929).

19
  This portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Many years after it was painted John described it in
Finishing Touches
as ‘most regrettable’. Orpen had painted it in imitation of Whistler’s ‘Carlyle’, and at the time John wrote of it to Michel Salaman: ‘Orpen’s portrait of me extracts much critical admiration. It is described in one notice as a clever portrait of Mr John in the character of a French Romantic.

‘One far-seeing gentleman hopes that I will emerge from my Rembrandtine chrysalis with a character of my own! I have just been to the Guildhall and return exalted with the profound beauty of Whistler’s Carlyle.’

20
  
Finishing Touches
p. 30.

21
                    ‘Augustus Caesar,’ so the poet said,

‘Shall be regarded as a present god

By Britain, made to kiss the Roman’s rod.’

Augustus Caesar long ago is dead,

But still the good work’s being carried on:

We lick the brushes of Augustus John.

Punch
27 February 1929

22
  
Rude Assignment
(1950), pp. 118–19.

23
  This letter was written to John Rothenstein (14 May 1952) after having read Rothenstein’s essay on Gwen John in
Modern English Painters.
Gwen ‘was never “unnoticed” by those who had access to her’, he corrected Rothenstein.

24
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 49.

25
  Augustus John to Robert Gregory n.d. (1909). NLW MS 21482D.

26
  Augustus John to Michel Salaman, August 1902. NLW MS 14928D fols. 59–60.

27
  Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt n.d. NLW MS 21468D.

28
  Quoted in Susan Chitty
Gwen John
(1981), p. 142.

29
  Possibly Grace Westray, a Slade student who lived with Gwen, Augustus and Winifred at 21 Fitzroy Street for a time and whom Gwen painted as ‘Young Woman with a Violin’ (Cecily Langdale
Gwen John
[1987] pl.5 cat. no. 4) and Augustus drew (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge PD 942). Her addresses up to 1914 are remarkably similar to those of Ambrose McEvoy and his wife. After the war she appears to have married a Mr Reardon and by 1930 was widowed and living in Wiltshire. ‘She and Mary McEvoy have both visited,’ Louise Bishop wrote to Gwen (22 October 1930). NLW MS 22304C fol. 50.

30
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 249.

31
  See
Gwen John
Retrospective Exhibition Catalogue, Arts Council, 1968. Introduction by Mary Taubman.

32
  Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 22 July 1936. NLW MS 21468D fol. 179.

33
  Letter from Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt n.d. NLW MS 21468D.

34
  Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 23 July 1927. NLW MS 21468D fol. 160.

35
  Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 6 June 1936. NLW MS 21468D fols. 140–2.

36
  NLW MS 14928D. The picture was bought by Frederick Brown at the Slade, and, a year after his death in 1941, was purchased by the Tate Gallery.

37
  
Table-Talk of G.B.S.
(ed. Archibald Henderson 1925), pp. 90–1.

38
  
Modern English Painters
(1976 edn) Volume I, ‘Gwen John’, pp. 160–1.

39
  In his obituary notice
(The Times,
1 February 1958) of Lady Smith, Augustus wrote: ‘The death of Lady (Matthew) Smith has removed one of the last survivors of what might be called the Grand Epoch of the Slade School. Gwen Salmond, as she then was, cut a commanding figure among a remarkably brilliant group of women students, consisting of such arresting personalities as Edna Waugh, Ursula Tyrwhitt, my sister Gwen John, and Ida Nettleship.

‘Gwen Salmond’s early compositions were distinguished by a force and temerity for which even her natural liveliness of temperament had not prepared us. I well remember a Deposition in our Sketch Club which would not have been out of place among the
ébauches
[sketch, rough draft] of, dare I say it, Tintoretto!

‘…“Marriage and Death and Division make barren our lives”. Gwen Smith had reason to know this but she also had the pluck to face it bravely, which is what made all the difference.’

40
  See Alison Thomas
Portraits of Women
(1994), pp. 24–9.

41
  Quoted by Alison Thomas in
Edna Clarke Hall.
Milne & Moller, Max Rutherston, catalogue (1989).

42
  Alison Thomas
Portraits of Women
p. 55.

43
  Bruce Arnold
Orpen. Mirror to an Age
(1981), p. 237.

44
  
Ibid.
p. 234.

45
  
Modern English Painters
Volume I, ‘William Orpen’, p. 227.

46
  
Men and Memories
Volume I p. 334.

47
  See
The Listener
(23 November 1967).

48
  Unpublished reminiscences. But see ‘Edna Clarke Hall: Drawings and Water-colours 1895–1947’ in the catalogue of the Slade Centenary Exhibition at the d’Offay Couper Gallery, October 1971.