Augustus John

by Michael Holroyd

  For John it had begun as a matter of principle. He took the Whistlerian view that money purchased merely the custodianship of a picture. Whatever the legal rights, he was convinced of his moral right. ‘Formal portraiture implied a subservience of artist to patron increasingly unacceptable to artists imbued with a romantic concern for expression, particularly self-expression,’ wrote the art historian Edward Morris.74 The history of John’s ‘Leverhulme’ was to take its place between Sargent’s ‘Henry Irving’ and Graham Sutherland’s ‘Winston Churchill’.

  The excitement provoked by this beheading was tremendous. Newspapers throughout Britain, the United States, Europe and as far off as Japan trumpeted their reports of the affair. Students of the London art schools marched on Hyde Park ‘bearing aloft a gigantic replica of the celebrated soap-boiler’s torso, the head being absent’.75 In Paris there was furore; in Italy a twenty-four hour strike was called involving everyone connected with painting – even models, colourmen and frame-makers. ‘A colossal effigy entitled “IL-LE-VER-HUL-ME” was constructed of soap and tallow, paraded through the streets of Florence, and ceremoniously burnt in the Piazza della Signoria, after which, the demonstrators proceeded to the Battisterio where a wreath was solemnly laid on the altar of St John.’76

  Appalled by the rumpus, John backed away to Lady Tredegar’s home, near Broadstairs; but the reporters, discovering his hiding place, besieged him there. ‘I did not want this publicity,’ he prevaricated. ‘I get too much as it is.’ Nevertheless, some papers were announcing that he intended to press the matter to the courts so as to establish a precedent for the protection of artists. ‘The bottom fact of the case is that there is something in a work of art which, in the highest equity as distinct from the law, you cannot buy,’ declared the Manchester Guardian.‘…Whatever the law may allow, or courts award, the common fairness of mankind cannot assent to the doctrine that one man may rightfully use his own rights of property in such a way as to silence or interrupt another in making so critical appeal to posterity for recognition of his genius. The right to put up this appeal comes too near those other fundamental personal rights the infringement of which is the essence of slavery.’

  The country waited for this Wilberforce of the art world to act. But after this great roll of drums, there was nothing. For John, unlike Whistler, had no relish for court work. He did not have the stamina of his own indignation, and his sense of humour outran his sense of honour. He ended the affair with a joke, exhibiting his portion of the portrait above the title ‘Lord Leverhulme’s Watch-chain’. For years he patiently preserved this decapitated torso while the missing head continued to stare unseen in its depository. Then, in 1954, by what Sir Gerald Kelly, the President of the Royal Academy, described as ‘hellish ingenuity’,*1 the two segments were sewn together and the picture elevated to a place of honour in the Leverhulme Art Gallery at Port Sunlight.

  Some sitters were pleased with John’s portraits of them – Lord Conway of Allington was ‘as proud as a peacock with two tails to be thus glorified by you’.77 But generally John was suspicious of praise and would tell admirers that they ‘didn’t know a painting from a cowpat’. It was surprising how much controversy his portraiture attracted. ‘I painted what I saw,’ he remarked of Lord Spencer’s portrait. ‘But many people have told me I ought to have been hung instead of the picture.’ Men he was tempted to caricature, women to sentimentalize. For this reason, as the examples of Gerald du Maurier and Tallulah Bankhead suggest, his good portraits of men were less acceptable to their sitters than his weaker pictures of women.

  John had painted du Maurier in four sittings during 1928, but the picture had lain in his studio in Mallord Street until Tallulah Bankhead found it there early in 1930. At her insistence it was shown, with her own portrait, at the Royal Academy Summer Show that year when together they caused a sensation. Tallulah reserved her portrait for the special price of one thousand pounds, but the du Maurier was for sale. Since his knighthood in 1922, du Maurier had become the acknowledged sovereign of the British theatre. But in John’s portrait, one of his more sombre studies, the actor-manager’s expression appeared almost criminal. Du Maurier had prayed never to see the picture again, and after it was exhibited at Burlington House he issued a distressed statement proclaiming that it ‘showed all the misery of my wretched soul… It would drive me either to suicide or strong drink.’78 John, apparently at a loss to account for this response from so fashionable an actor, suggested that perhaps it was insufficiently permeated with sex appeal: ‘In my innocence I had omitted to repair his broken nose.’79

  John had imagined the picture hanging at the Garrick Club, but Tallulah herself bought it (‘even though I had to go in hock’80) and carried it off to the United States. It was, however, her own portrait that, as her legend grew, became the more celebrated. ‘My most valuable possession is my Augustus John portrait,’ she wrote in her autobiography:81 and since Lord Duveen had offered her one hundred thousand dollars for it, this may have been literally true. Opinion since then has moderated. The judgement of one critic in 1930 – that it was ‘the greatest portraiture since Gainsborough’s “Perdita”’ – now looks excessive.82 According to some who saw it, John’s first image of Tallulah – a thin face blown lightly on to the canvas – had been exquisite. But the finished work was a little disappointing. ‘Perhaps she has just that initial quality and no follow through,’ T. E. Lawrence tactfully suggested.83 Tallulah’s friends objected that the baleful fragility of the painting had little connection with her ravishing beauty – the blue eyes, voluptuous mouth and honey-coloured hair falling in waves on to her shoulders. Yet over the years she suffered a curious change into the very replica of this picture – either an act of will on her part or, on John’s, of foresight.

  ‘I’m not a fashionable portrait painter,’ he told John Freeman.84 Perhaps the most endearingly deficient picture of his career was the painting of the Queen (now the Queen Mother) he failed to finish between the years 1939 and 1961.

  John had been tentatively suggested as a royal portrait painter by Lord D’Abernon as early as 1925. In his shocked rejection, King George V’s Private Secretary, Lord Stamfordham, replied (11 December 1925): ‘No! H.M. wouldn’t look at A.J.!! and so A.J. wouldn’t be able to look at H.M.!!’ The notion merited only a joke. Then, in 1937, shortly after George VI had come to the throne, Hugo Pitman (who had been in love with her and become her stockbroker) nervously invited John to meet the new Queen – provided he arrived dead sober. The implication angered John. For a moment he looked murderous, then, his face clearing, he inquired: ‘Must I be dead sober when I leave?’ One way or another the meeting had gone well. The possibility of a portrait was touched on, though nothing decided. ‘It is very nice to know that the Queen still wants me to paint her,’ John wrote to Maud Cazalet two years later. ‘Needless to say I am at her service and would love to do her portrait whenever it is possible.’ In September the outbreak of war seemed to put an end to this plan. ‘No chance of doing Her Majesty now...’85

  But to John’s surprise, the Queen did not see the war as an obstacle. ‘The Queen is going to sit for me,’ he wrote on 23 November 1939, ‘…I shall probably start on it in a few days.’86 At this time of crisis, an inspiring new picture of the Queen in Garter robes was what the nation needed. John, who had overlooked the national significance such a portrait might have, was thinking more informally. The Queen could sit, he thought, during weekends at Windsor Castle – it would be ‘a well-earned rest’ for her. ‘I would stay in some pub,’ he explained to Mrs Cazalet, ‘and no doubt there’s a suitable room at the castle for painting.’87 If not, doubtless there’d be something at the pub – ‘one could keep it very dark’. The Queen, he hoped, would wear ‘a pretty costume with a hat’: something ‘décolletée’. She would be a tremendous success in Hollywood – the destination he vaguely had in mind for the portrait.

  Arrangements were completed in October. The portrait was to be painted in Buckingham
Palace, where a room with a north-east aspect had been set aside. All painting equipment must be dispatched in advance. John himself should seek admittance by the Privy Purse entrance. It was possible that Her Majesty might be graciously pleased to accept the picture as a token of the artist’s ‘deep admiration and respect’. The first sitting was scheduled for Tuesday, 31 October 1939 at eleven o’clock, but the Queen would consent to receive him at two forty-five on the Monday afternoon for a preliminary interview.

  John was horrified. By the time Monday came he felt ‘very odd’ and wired to call the meeting off. It had been, he diagnosed, an attack of the influenza, though with a slip of the pen he described himself as suffering from ‘the influence’.

  The Palace, meanwhile, awaited news from him ‘to say when you will feel yourself available again’.88 Sittings began next month. ‘I’m dreading it,’ John told Egerton Cooper as he set off in a taxi. What should the Queen wear? At last an evening gown was agreed on, but an extraordinary eagerness to discover fresh difficulties possessed John. ‘Is there a platform available at the Palace?’ he suddenly demanded. ‘It should be a foot from the ground or slightly more.’ Could they, he also wanted to know, import an easel with a forward lean? By the beginning of 1940, the sittings were transferred to another room, where John had installed a new electric daylight system. ‘I feel sure it will prove a success and will illuminate Your Majesty in a far more satisfactory way besides rendering one independent of the weather.’ It was the weather,89 nevertheless, that offered the next interruption. ‘The temperature in the Yellow Room is indistinguishable to that reported in Finland,’ the Queen’s Private Secretary advised, ‘and Her Majesty would like therefore to wait until some temperature more agreeable… makes resumption of the portrait possible.’ There was no difficulty here: John knew how to wait. But when sittings started again in March fresh difficulties had bloomed. Though there was much chinoiserie ‘from the Brighton Pavilion. Quite amusing in itself’,90 there was ‘lack of back-ground,’ John ejaculated. ‘…What is wanted is a tapestry of the right sort – with a bit of sky and landscape. Perhaps I shall have to invent one.’ The Palace, anxious for John to avoid invention, hurried in tapestries and decorations. These, at John’s request, were subsequently removed, and afterwards at John’s insistence returned. With and without them, he struggled on. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if people have been peeping at the beginning of it and seeing it merely sketched out in green,’ he suspected. ‘…I loathe people peeping… ’ Green, he had decided, was a mistake. But when he arrived at the Palace to change it to blue, Her Majesty was not there. ‘As the Queen understood from you that you were going to have your tonsils out, Her Majesty made other arrangements,’ her secretary explained.

  The trouble was John’s paralysing shyness. He could not overcome it. ‘She has been absolutely angelic in posing so often and with such cheerfulnes,’ he told Mrs Cazalet on 13 June 1940. But he could make no contact with her – she was not real. He wanted to make her real… Good God! It was an impossible situation.

  Something of these inhibitions was sensed at Buckingham Palace. In next to no time sherry was introduced into the sittings; and then, in a cupboard reserved for John’s painting equipment, a private bottle of brandy. As a further aid to relaxation, the Griller Quartet (unnervingly misheard by John as the ‘Gorilla Quartet’) was wheeled into an anteroom to play works by English composers. Eventually it was Hitler who came to the rescue, his blitz on London providing the ostensible motive everyone had been seeking to end the ordeal. ‘At this moment, what is described as “the last sitting” is proceeding,’ the Queen’s Private Secretary wrote on 26 June 1940. John put his bravest face on the matter: ‘it looks very near done to a turn,’ he told Mrs Cazalet.

  During the summer he described the portrait as ‘lingering’, adding that ‘H.M. is the best of women and I am very devoted to her.’ That autumn it was moved to his studio in the country where he continued to brood over it. ‘I can see a good Johnish picture – not a Cecil Beaton creation or anything of that sort,’ he had claimed. Later, on 10 February 1941, he evolved a new plan ‘to bring Mr Cecil Beaton to the Palace to take some photographs of Her Majesty, which should help me to complete her picture’. The Queen agreed to this. She did more: the following year she wrote to remind John of her portrait, suggesting that it might help matters if she wore a hat. ‘If you are in London, I could come to your studio if you have any windows, for we have none in Buckingham Palace, and it is too dark and dusty to paint in anyway.’91

  John felt acutely his sense of failure. He shut away the portrait and no one was allowed to see it. In December 1948, the Queen wrote again suggesting a drawing of her daughter Margaret: ‘I could easily bring her to your studio, and I promise that I won’t bring an orchestra with me!’92 Nothing came of this or of her wish to commission a cartoon from him for a tapestry, and it was not until the early 1960s that the Queen Mother, as she had become, finally took possession of the portrait. Under thick dust and massed cobwebs, in a world of rats and spiders, it had lain with canvases from all periods in one of the cellars below John’s studio. Here in 1960 a foraging West End dealer stumbled across it. ‘Perhaps the Queen Mother would not mind deferring the completion of her portrait till next spring when the light would be more favourable,’93 John urgently requested on 30 July 1960. In March 1961, at a show of John’s ‘Paintings and Drawings not previously exhibited’, and despite a desperate last-minute attempt by John to withdraw it, the portrait was revealed to the public. Shortly afterwards a shipping company, to commemorate the launching of a large tanker, presented it to the Queen Mother. ‘I want to tell you what a tremendous pleasure it gives me to see it once again,’ she wrote to John on 19 July 1961. ‘It looks so lovely in my drawing-room, and has cheered it up no end! The sequins glitter, and the roses and the red chair give a fine glow, and I am so happy to have it… ’94

  After almost twenty-two years the portrait had come home where, greatly loved, it remained. It is not the picture of a queen, nor of a woman: but of a fairy princess. It is disarmingly unfinished, and no masterpiece. Stern critics have condemned it. Yet the sitter has seen something to which others are perhaps blind.

  4

  METHODS AND PLACES

  ‘I believe Papa’s chief ambition in life is to see me an R.A. I fear he will die a disappointed man.’

  Augustus John to Gwen John (May 1920)

  From commissioned portraits, with all their rules of vanity and forced politeness, John turned with relief back to the ranks of his family. For them there was little relief. The ordeal of sitting had begun at the age of two-and-a-half. To the girls, Poppet and Vivien, he was a fearful figure. Each morning they would wait to discover which of them was doomed for the day. Their tears were stemmed with lumps of sugar: and the painting went remorselessly on. The slightest movement of the head or body was immediately corrected with the point of the brush used like a conductor’s baton.

  The studio was John’s battlefield. His preparatory drill never changed. Though he might debate with a woman about the wearing, or not, of a dress, he seldom posed his subjects. ‘Sit down!’ was his instruction to men on leading them up to the platform. After that the sitter was merely an ‘object’, an arrangement of shapes, surfaces and colours. John would come up very close, too close, and glare. It was difficult not to start back at the ferocity of those glaring eyes an inch away. Then with a grunt he retreated: and battle began.

  He painted with intense physical concentration, working without words, breathing heavily, occasionally stamping his foot, drawing on his pipe which uttered small bubbling sounds. Sometimes it appeared as if he had stopped breathing altogether, and then everything seemed to stop – the clocks, the bees, the birds on the trees. Perspiration broke out on his temples, the pipe trembled between his lips, and the only sound for miles seemed to be the brush jabbing on the canvas. Suddenly he would jump backwards, knocking over a chair; there was a crash and a curse, and he would begin pac
ing back and forwards. The sitter, his body aching as if on a rack, appeared forgotten. Finally a rest was called, like half-time at a football match, and John would sit down for a long look at the canvas. Two or three minutes later he was up and at it again.

  There were variations in this drill. Occasionally he played music on the radio, or if things were going well the silence might be splintered by a Welsh poem or a snatch of song. Sometimes he smoked cigarettes instead of a pipe, and as he advanced and retreated before the canvas, he would throw the stubs into a corner, unerringly missing the ashtray and waste-paper basket, and a few times starting a small fire. For those who were practised sitters it was possible to tell which part of them he was working on, and to keep that part alive: and invariably when he came to the mouth he would summon his own lips into a rosebud.