1915
March, Vivien born.
May, Hugh Lane drowned in Lusitania.
June, at Coole. Paints three portraits of Bernard Shaw.
October, Aran Islands and Galway.
1916
February, Chenil Gallery: Paintings (21) and Drawings (41). Portrait of Lloyd George.
May, Chenil Gallery: ‘Etchings by Augustus E. John’.
July, goes to Herbert Barker for knee operation.
August, rejected for military service. ‘Galway’ shown at Arts and Crafts Exhibition, Burlington House.
Starts experiments in lithography. Bust by Jacob Epstein.
1917
20 March, Monster Matinée at Chelsea Palace Theatre.
27 April, meets Lady Cynthia Asquith.
August, portrait of Oliver St John Gogarty.
9 October, begins portrait of Lady Cynthia Asquith (‘Lady in Black’).
November–February (1918), Alpine Club: pictures and decorations (67 exhibits).
December, advances to Aubigny as a Canadian Army major.
1918
March, retires from France after knocking out Captain Wright.
May, starts Canadian cartoon (National Gallery of Canada) and ‘Fraternity’ (Imperial War Museum, London).
8–28 August, represented at ‘Englische Moderne Malerei’, an exhibition organized by the Contemporary Arts Society at the Kunsthaus, Zürich.
1919
February–May, in Paris as official war artist. Paints Marchesa Casati and Duchess of Gramont. First drawing of T. E. Lawrence.
March, Chenil Gallery: 125 etchings.
September, at Deauville with Lloyd George.
1920
Augustus John by Charles Marriott published by John Lane in the ‘Masters of Modern Art’ series. Elected Fellow of University College, London.
March, Alpine Club: War, Peace Conference and Other Portraits (39 exhibits).
April, Sister Carline Hospital. Operation on nose.
May, Rouen and Dieppe.
October, rumpus over Lord Leverhulme’s decapitated portrait.
Campbell Dodgson’s Catalogue of Etchings by A. E. John published.
1921
22 April, elected Associate of the Royal Academy. Begins painting of Mme Suggia.
June, portrait of Herbert Barker.
1922
March, the Sculptors’ Gallery, New York: works by Epstein, Gaudier-Brzeska, Innes, Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis from Quinn Collection (7 paintings, 7 drawings).
April, Paris.
May, arrives in Spain.
1923
March, Alpine Club Gallery: Paintings and Drawings. First showing of ‘Mme Suggia’.
28 March–23 June, United States.
June, Beaux Arts Gallery: paintings (29).
Augustus John by A.B. [Anthony Bertram] published by Benn.
21 September, meets Thomas Hardy at Kingston Maurward.
October, completes portrait of Hardy at Max Gate.
1924
‘Mme Suggia’ wins first prize at International Exhibition, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.
April–June, United States.
July, in Dublin for Taillteann Games. Stays with Lord Dunsany.
September-October, Paris.
1925
February, Lord Duveen gives ‘Mme Suggia’ to the Tate Gallery.
March–April, in Berlin. Paints Gustav Stresemann and Lali Horstmann.
May–June, Ischia with T. W. Earp.
Italy. Starts flower painting.
1926
February–March, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, United States: drawings.
February–April, France.
April, Elected member of Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
May, New Chenil Gallery: Paintings (47) and Drawings (35); Gwen John, paintings (44) and 4 albums of drawings.
17 June, begins portrait of Hugh Walpole.
9 July, ‘Art and the Public’, BBC talk. Meets and paints Sean O’Casey.
October, walks from Avignon to Marseilles with Horace de Vere Cole and A. R. Thomson.
December (till February 1927), at Villa Ste-Anne.
1927
Begins portrait of Lord D’Abernon.
March, moves from Alderney Manor to Fryern Court.
June–July, at Château de Missery.
July, helps Gwen John buy Yew Tree Cottage, Burgate Cross, Fordingbridge.
December (till January 1928), South of France.
1928
14 January–4 February, Anderson Gallery, New York: Paintings and Drawings.
April, Villa Ste-Anne sold.
August–December, in United States. Portrait of Governor Fuller.
5 December, elected Royal Academician.
1929
February, at Cap Ferrat with James Dunn.
4 April–17 May, Tooth’s Gallery: Recent Paintings (27).
May–June, designs sets for Act II of Sean O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie.
July, Château de Missery.
September, Rheims.
October, paints T. E. Lawrence at Fryern Court.
November, drawing of Frederick Delius.
December, designs Noah’s Ark for Chelsea Arts Club Ball at Albert Hall.
1930
Contributes reminiscences to Ifan Kyrle Fletcher’s Ronald Firbank.
April, Harlow, McDonald & Co, New York: Etchings and Drawings.
1 April, begins portrait of Montagu Norman.
April–May, in hospital, Preston Deanery Hall, Northampton.
July–September, Ireland. Portraits of W. B. Yeats and Brenda Gogarty.
October, Kiddalton Castle, Port Ellen, Isle of Islay. In Amsterdam with Dorelia.
November, Paris, James Joyce drawings.
December (till February 1931), Cap Ferrat.
1931
21 November, funeral of John Sampson who bequeaths John under Clause 8 of his will, ‘my Smith and Wesson Revolver No. 239892’.
1932
February–March, in Jersey with Sir Herbert Barker. More attention to knee. Lord D’Abernon’s portrait signed.
May, portraits of Joe Hone and T. W. Earp.
June, represented at XVIII Biennial International Art Exhibition, Venice.
July, France.
August, Cornwall. Romilly John’s The Seventh Child published by Heinemann.
December, Majorca.
Death of Mrs Nettleship.
1933
January, Leicester Galleries: Sixty Etchings. LL D Cardiff University.
August, appointed trustee of the Tate Gallery (to 1941). Venice.
1934
Augustus John by T. W. Earp, published by Nelson.
21 May, elected President of Royal Cambrian Academy of Art.
September, Paris.
October (to February 1935), ‘Etchings at the National Museum of Wales’ (catalogue by Kighley Baxandall). Mallord Street sold to Gracie Fields. New studio built at Fryern Court.
1935
30 April, ‘La Séraphita’ and other paintings destroyed in fire at Fryern.
14 May, letter to The Times about Stanley Spencer’s works.
June, borrows Vanessa Bell’s studio for one month.
22 June, Henry John missing. Body found drowned on 6 July.
November, takes studio at 49 Glebe Place.
1936
5–29 February, Adams Gallery: Forty Etchings.
April, Paris.
25 April, Laugharne Castle, Carmarthen. Portrait of Dylan Thomas.
26 May, fined £5 for drinking after hours at the Old Mill Club, Salisbury.
June, represented at XX Biennial International Art Exhibition (4 paintings).
Autumn, British Empire Exhibition, Johannesburg. Works (later with Ernst Stern) on designs for costumes and scenery for C. B. Cochran’s production of J. M. Barrie’s The Boy David, which opened on 14 December.
1937
&
nbsp; Associated with new school of drawing and painting under the direction of Claude Rogers, Victor Pasmore and William Coldstream. Elected President of the Gypsy Lore Society.
March, Wildenstein Gallery, London: Thirty Drawings.
February–May, Jamaica. Travels back on a banana boat via Rotterdam.
September, rents Mas de Galeron, St-Rémy-de-Provence.Visits Matthew Smith at Aix-en-Provence.
1938
February, one of three British artists (with Sickert and Steer) represented at Exhibition of British Art at the Louvre, Paris.
March, Leicester Galleries: Drawings. Takes Park Studio, Pelham Street, London.
7 April, father dies in Tenby.
28 April, resigns from Royal Academy following its rejection of Wyndham Lewis’s portrait of T. S. Eliot.
19 May–11 June, Tooth’s Gallery: Latest Paintings (32), including Jamaican pictures.
18 June, Dorelia’s mother dies following a fall from the balcony of her bedroom at Fryern Court on 20 May.
4 July, opens Exhibition of Twentieth-Century German Art at Burlington House.
July, signs contract with Jonathan Cape for autobiography.
August, at Laugharne with Richard Hughes.
27 August, goes to Mas de Galeron.
1939
February–March, Redfern Gallery: Exhibition of Paintings by John, Innes and Derwent Lees.
July–August, Mas de Galeron.
18 September, Gwen John dies at Dieppe.
Autumn, begins painting the Queen. Represented at British Council Exhibition, New York.
1940
Honorary Member of the London Group.
16 February, re-elected to the Royal Academy.
July, moves to studio at 33 Tite Street, Chelsea.
November, National Gallery: ‘British Painting Since Whistler: Drawings of Augustus John’ (112).
December, exhibition at the Francis Taylor Gallery, Hollywood.
1941
February, starts writing for Cyril Connolly’s Horizon (until April 1949).
June, Redfern Gallery: Drawings (40).
July, joins the Green Shirts and ‘throws in his lot’ with the Social Credit Party.
October, Augustus John Drawings, edited by Lillian Browse, published by Faber and Faber.
1942
March, etchings collected by Gerald Brockhurst shown at Boston Library, Massachusetts.
11 June, awarded Order of Merit (investiture 2 July).
31 June, writes to The Times deploring the lack of interest shown by press and public in Ethel Walker’s exhibition at the Lefevre Gallery.
October, article on Gwen John published by Burlington Magazine.
1943
January, elected Honorary Member, American National Institute of Arts and Letters. Artists’ International Association (1 painting).
May, Leicester Galleries: ‘Drawings by Augustus John, Paintings by Gilbert Spencer’.
1944
Matthew Smith stays at Fryern; he and John paint each other.
14 March, Alfred Munnings 24 votes, John 17 in elections for the presidency of the Royal Academy.
7 June, in a light fawn tropical suit opens Exhibition of Indian Art for the Mayor of Calcutta’s Relief Fund.
2 August, appointed First President of the Central Institute of Art and Design.
October, Augustus John by John Rothenstein published by Phaidon and Allen & Unwin as Phaidon Press Art Books: ‘British Artists’ series, No. 2.
1945
In Wales with the Howard de Waldens.
July–November, Tite Street studio under repair.
1946
Introduction to Gwen John exhibition (Arts Council). Elected chairman of the Contemporary Art Society for Wales. Elected member of Académie Royale de Belgique. Jeu de Paume, Paris: represented in ‘Exposition de peinture anglaise du XX siècle’ (portraits and a composition).
24 July–31 August, Temple Newsam House, Leeds: Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings (124 exhibits).
24 December, letter to The Times about the dangers of picture cleaning at the National Gallery.
1947
A long convalescence. September–October, Mousehole, Cornwall.
1948
May, Leicester Galleries: Exhibition of work from previous fifteen years (52 exhibits), including 12-foot canvas ‘The Little Concert’ (grisaille).
31 May, on the cover of Time magazine, USA.
10 July, elected President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
30 July, Welsh National Eisteddfod, Bridgend. Arts Council Exhibition: Paintings (61) and Drawings (65).
October, American-British Art Center: Drawings.
1949
7 March, ‘Engaged on a long and vast composition’ (letter to Wyndham Lewis).
21 March–12 April, Scott & Fowles, New York: Exhibition of Works in American Collections (23 paintings).
9 September, radio talk for BBC, Far Eastern Service, ‘I Speak for Myself’.
November, Lefevre Gallery: ‘Works by Augustus John and Ethel Walker’. ‘Frontiers’ published by Delphic Review.
1950
30 April, profile in London Observer.
June–July, Mas de Galeron given up.
July–August, Hôtel de Bourgogne, Paris: ‘a course of injections’.
29 August, letter to The Times on art students at the National Gallery. Castello San Peyre, Opio, France.
October, Paris.
1951
15 January, Café Royal closes. Leaves Tite Street studio.
17 August, letter to The Times about the Arts Council of Great Britain.
1952
28 January, on the cover of Life magazine.
3 March, Chiaroscuro published by Jonathan Cape (by Pellerini & Cudahy in United States).
5 March, appointed Vice-President of the Artists’ Benevolent Institution.
28 March, Guest of Honour at Foyle’s Literary Lunch: ‘I am two people instead of one: the one you see before you is the old painter. But another one has just cropped up – the young writer.’
October, Introduction to the catalogue of Ulrica Forbes Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
1953
Resigns as President of Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
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