Augustus John

by Michael Holroyd

  79 Chiaroscuro p. 147. See also Horizon Volume X No. 56 (August 1944), p. 131.

  80 Tallulah Bankhead Tallulah, My Autobiography (1952), p. 156.

  81 Ibid. p. 154.

  82 See Lee Israel Miss Tallulah Bankhead (1972), p. 127. Also Brendan Gill’s Tallulah (1973), in which a letter and photograph of John are reproduced on p. 130, and a drawing on p. 131. After Tallulah Bankhead’s death, both her John pictures were sold at the Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York. Her own portrait, appraised at $15,000, was sold for $19,500 and is now in the National Gallery in Washington, DC. The portrait of Gerald du Maurier, appraised between $9,000 and $12,000, fetched only $5,000 and later passed into the collection of Gerald du Maurier’s daughter, Jeanne du Maurier.

  83 T. E. Lawrence to John, 19 April 1930. NLW MS 22783D fol. 12.

  84 Interview on Face to Face, BBC Television, 15 May 1960.

  85 John to Maud Cazalet, 3 March 1939.

  86 John to Kassie, 23 November 1939. NLW MS 21570E.

  87 John to Maud Cazalet, 23 September 1939.

  88 Letter from A. Pernn, the Queen’s Private Secretary, to John, 1 November 1939. Clarence House.

  89 John to HM Queen Elizabeth, 20 January 1940.

  90 John to Gerald Kelly, 7 April 1954. Royal Academy.

  91 HM Queen Elizabeth to John, 16 October 1942. NLW MS 22780E fols. 73–4·

  92 HM Queen Elizabeth to John, 2 December 1948. NLW MS 22780E fols. 75–6.

  93 Augustus to Caspar John, 30 July 1960. NLW MS 22775C fol. 45.

  94 HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother to John, 19 July 1961 from Clarence House. NLW MS 22780E fols. 77–8.

  95 ‘Mr Augustus John and the Royal Academy’ The Times (31 March 1920).

  96 Augustus to Gwen John, May 1920. NLW MS 22305D fols. 130–2.

  97 Horizon Volume X No. 56 (August 1944), p. 146.

  In a letter to his mother, Christopher Wood wrote (22 May 1922): ‘Augustus John has been admitted to the Academy this year. They wouldn’t have him before. I don’t think he takes this as an honour in the least, as it doesn’t matter much to him whether he is an A.R.A. or not. He is unquestionably the greatest painter in England to-day and if he hadn’t drunk so much would have been greater than Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo.’

  98 Edwin William John to Gwen John, 1 May 1920. NLW MS 22306D fols. 28–9.

  99 John to Sean O’Casey n.d. (1928–9). There are ten letters from John to O’Casey (1926–52) at the National Library of Wales. NLW MS 21980C.

  100 John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 7 April 1958. NLW MS 19645C.

  101 John to Bapsy Pavry, 8 October 1948. NLW MS 21622D.

  102 T. E. Lawrence to John, 9 April 1930. NLW MS 22783D fol. 11.

  103 Dorelia to Edwin John, 3 May 1938. NLW MS 22313D fols. 8–9.

  104 John to Laura Knight, 9 April 1938. In another letter to Laura Knight (3 May 1938. NLW MS 21570E) John wrote: ‘Although I did so little directly to affect the general policy of the Academy, always feeling somewhat ill-at-ease within those sacred precincts, my views as to a more liberal though not less critical an attitude to outside activities must have been well known and, I felt sometimes, even regarded with grave suspicion… The President, I know, had the courage to advocate a more enlightened attitude towards modern painting & I can assure you it was a particularly painful experience for me to take so violent a step… What you say is quite true of the necessarily slow & belated movement towards reform in a body like the R.A. The fact is it will always be too slow...’

  105 John to Philip Connard, 18 January 1944.

  106 Augustus to Edwin John, 5 July 1944. NLW MS 22312C fol. 52.

  107 See Daily Graphic (14 June 1924).

  108 Christian Science Monitor, Boston (17 December 1923); Statesman, Calcutta (12 October 1924).

  109 See, for example, Colour (November–December 1923 and January 1924).

  110 Eugene Goossens ‘Culture in Music’ Daily Express (19 July 1924).

  111 The Economist (15 March 1924), p. 592.

  112 Manchester Guardian Weekly (3 October 1924).

  113 John to Mitchell Kennerley, 22 November 1926. New York Public Library.

  114 Knewstub to John from King’s Nursing Home, 22 December 1922. NLW MS 22782D fol. 167.

  115 Quoted in Richard Shone Augustus John (1979), p. 10.

  116 John to J. B. Manson, 2 July 1927.

  117 John to J. B. Manson, 4 July 1927.

  118 John to Wyndham Lewis, 9 December 1927.

  119 Augustus to Dorelia n.d.

  120 Poppet Pol to the author, March 1970.

  121 Ibid.

  122 John to Mitchell Kennerley, 22 November 1926.

  123 John to Mitchell Kennerley, 22 November 1922.

  124 John to Viva Booth, 14 May 1922.

  125 Augustus to Dorelia, 13 May 1922. NLW 22778D fols. 31–2.

  126 Horizon Volume VII No. 37 (January 1943), p. 60. Cf. Chiaroscuro p. 181.

  127 Augustus to Dorelia, 13 June 1922. NLW MS 22778D fol. 35.

  128 Horizon Volume VII No. 37 (January 1943), pp. 63–4.

  129 John to Ottoline Morrell, 1 February 1922.

  130 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (June 1924). NLW MS 22778D fol. 55.

  131 Sir Compton Mackenzie My Life and Times Octave 6 (1963–71), pp. 39–40, and Ulick O’Connor Oliver St John Gogarty (1964), p. 212. But for an amended version of this story see Mark Amory Lord Dunsany: A Biography (1972).

  132 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (April 1925). NLW MS 22778D fol. 68.

  133 Horizon Volume X No. 56 (August 1944), p. 129.

  134 Lord D’Abernon’s diary, An Ambassador of Peace Volume III The Years of Recovery January 1924–October 1926 (1930), p. 15.

  135 Ibid. p. 16.

  136 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (April 1925). NLW MS 22778D fol. 68.

  ‘The sittings for this portrait took place mostly at 3 o’cl. p.m. and already at that time I have asked Sir Augustus to put below the portrait: The German Minister for Foreign Affairs at 3 o’cl in the afternoon, for I don’t think that I am really so sleepy and broken down as I am represented on this picture.’ Stresemann to Dr Ruppel, 12 June 1926. The portrait of Stresemann is now in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY.

  137 Lord D’Abernon An Ambassador of Peace Volume III p. 152.

  138 Publisher, and director of the Anderson Gallery, 489 Park Avenue, New York.

  139 Horizon Volume XI No. 64 (April 1945), p. 242.

  140 Romilly John The Seventh Child p. 218.

  141 Chiaroscuro p. 190.

  142 Horizon Volume XI No. 64 (April 1945), p. 244.

  143 Ibid. p. 244.

  144 John to Oliver St Gogarty, 22 May 1925. The two girls, Cleves and Pita, were the daughters of Countess Stead.

  145 Richard Shone Augustus John p. 10.

  146 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (April 1923). NLW MS 22778D fols. 39–40. But he came away ‘feeling considerably older & less wise than before, and certainly not much richer,’ he told Christabel McLaren. British Library Add. MS 52556 fol. 60.

  147 For a list of John’s works shown at this exhibition, see Milton W. Brown The Story of the Armory Show (1963), pp. 253–5.

  148 B. L. Reid The Man from New York (1968), p. 152.

  149 Horizon Volume X No. 56 (August 1944), p. 141.

  150 Chiaroscuro p. 160.

  151 Conger Goodyear Augustus John p. 29.

  152 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (April 1923). NLW MS 22778D fols. 41–2.

  153 Conger Goodyear op. cit. p. 29.

  154 Augustus to Dorelia, 17 April 1923. NLW MS 22778D fol. 43.

  155 Horizon Volume X No. 56 (August 1944), pp. 141–2.

  156 See, for example, his letter of 16 February 1923 to Homer Saint Gaudens (American Archives of Art). Most of the articles written about him show little evidence of his co-operation – see ‘A Much-Talked of Painter’ New York Times Magazine (24 June 1923).

  157 Augustus to Dorelia, 17 April 1923. NLW MS 22778D fol. 43.

  158
Horizon Volume XII No. 72 (December 1945), p. 418.

  159 Art News, New York (16 June 1923), pp. 1, 4.

  160 Ibid. p. 4.

  161 Jeanne Foster to Gwen John, 14 August 1924. NLW MS 22305D fol. 66.

  162 Mitchell Kennerley to John, 13 August 1924. NLW MS 22782D fols. 151–2.

  163 Introduction by E. J. Rousuck to Catalogue for ‘Augustus John’, Scott & Fowles, 21 March–12 April 1949: ‘an electric event which produced not only a new group of paintings, but countless anecdotes, legends, friendships that enriched the great saga of John’s career.’

  164 Jeanne Foster to Gwen John n.d. (April 1924). NLW MS 22305D fol. 63.

  165 Homer Saint Gaudens to Martin Birnbaum, 23 June 1924. American Archives of Art.

  166 Now in the National Gallery, Washington, DC.

  167 John to Mitchell Kennerley n.d.

  168 John to Christabel Aberconway, 29 September 1928. This correspondence is in the British Library. See also the correspondence with Nina Hamnett at the University of Texas.

  169 Horizon Volume XII No. 72 (December 1945), pp. 419–20.

  170 Augustus to Gwen John, May 1920. NLW MS 22305D fols. 130–2.

  CHAPTER X: THE WAY THEY LIVED THEN

  1 Nicolette Devas Two Flamboyant Fathers (1966), p. 65.

  2 John to Christabel Aberconway. British Library Add. MS 52556.

  3 Cecil Beaton The Glass of Fashion (1954), p. 156.

  4 For a full analysis of this studio, which was designed by Christopher Nicholson, see Architectural Review Volume LXXVII (February 1935), pp. 65–8.

  5 Cecil Beaton The Glass of Fashion p. 158.

  6 Nicolette Devas Two Flamboyant Fathers p. 66.

  7 Adrian Daintrey I Must Say (1963), p. 75.

  8 BBC Home Service, 8 November 1963.

  9 Dorelia to Lytton Strachey, 4 December 1918.

  10 Henry Lamb’s letters to Carrington are in the University of Texas Library, Austin, Texas.

  11 Anthony Powell Journals 1982–1986 (1995), pp. 115–16, entry for 30 June 1984.

  12 Keith Clements Henry Lamb. The Artist and his Friends (1985), p. 57.

  13 Lamb to Carrington n.d.

  14 Keith Clements Henry Lamb p. 60.

  15 Diana Mosley to the author, 5 January 1970.

  16 Cecil Gray Musical Chairs (1948), p. 278.

  17 William Rothenstein to John, 25 March 1907. NLW MS 22784D fols. 135–6.

  18 Rupert Hart-Davis Hugh Walpole: A Biography (1952), p. 272. John’s portrait of Walpole (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) is reproduced opposite this page, and a chalk drawing as frontispiece.

  19 John to Christabel Aberconway, 3 November 1928. See also Christabel Aberconway A Wiser Woman? A Book of Memories (1966).

  20 John to Ottoline Morrell n.d.

  21 Leonard Woolf An Autobiography Volume 2 1911–1969 (1980 edn), pp. 114, 128. See also Volume I p. 64.

  22 Lady Ottoline Morrell to Augustus John, 31 March 1930, 1 April 1930, from Gower Street. NLW MS 22783D fols. 162–5.

  23 John to Ottoline Morrell n.d.

  24 Eve Fleming to John, 8 April 1930. NLW MS 22780E fols. 95–6.

  25 John to Ottoline Morrell n.d.

  26 Sandra Jobson Darroch Ottoline. The Life of Lady Ottoline Morrell (1975), p. 273.

  27 Miranda Seymour Ottoline Morrell. Life on the Grand Scale (1992), p. 386.

  28 Augustus to Dorelia, 16 April 1930. NLW MS 22778D fol. 133.

  29 Eve Fleming to John, 8 April 1930. NLW MS 22780E fols. 95–6.

  30 John to Ottoline Morrell, 20 July 1932.

  31 John to Tallulah Bankhead, 12 May 1930.

  32 T. E. Lawrence to G. W. M. Dunn, 9 November 1932. The Letters of T. E. Lawrence (ed. David Garnett 1938), p. 752.

  33 John to Al Wright, 13 August 1946. Time magazine ‘morgue’ (8 June 1948).

  34 Conger Goodyear Augustus John (privately printed), p. 35.

  35 John to Viva King n.d.

  36 W. B. Yeats ‘Pages from a Diary Written in Nineteen Hundred and Thirty’. The Cuala Press (September 1944).

  37 W. B. Yeats to Lady Gregory, 25 May 1930, from via Americhe, Rapallo.

  38 W. B. Yeats to George Yeats n.d. (c. 25 July 1930).

  39 W. B. Yeats to George Yeats (27 July 1930).

  40 W. B. Yeats to George Yeats, 3 August 1930. This big picture, which Yeats used as frontispiece for his philosophical works A Vision, is at Glasgow City Art Gallery. ‘John has done a fine portrait – a large oil. I am sitting on a chair in the open air with my legs in a fur-bag,’ Yeats wrote to Lady Gregory (30 July 1930). ‘There is also an amusing smaller portrait but John no longer likes it so it may remain unfinished.’

  41 Horizon Volume IV No. 22 (October 1941), p. 291. For a variant description see Chiaroscuro p. 101.

  42 Horizon Volume IV No. 22 (October 1941), p. 291.

  43 Oliver St John Gogarty It Isn’t This Time of Year at All (1954), p. 242.

  44 Hope Scott to her mother n.d.

  45 Hope Scott to the author, 29 November 1968.

  46 Horizon Volume XII No. 72 (December 1945), p. 428.

  47 Courage. The Story of Sir James Dunn pp. 247–8. See also The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lock hart 1915–38 (ed. Kenneth Young 1973), 25 January 1931, p. 149.

  48 James Joyce to John, March 1933, from 42 rue Galilei, Paris. NLW MS 22782D fols. 132–3.

  49 Daily Telegraph (1 December 1932).

  50 Ibid. (20 December 1932).

  51 Vivien White to the author, June 1973.

  52 John to Bapsy Pavry, 1 December 1933. NLW MS 21622D.

  53 Horizon Volume XIII No. 73 (January 1946), pp. 51–2.

  54 John to Casati n.d.

  55 John to Mavis de Vere Cole n.d. (January 1937).

  56 Chiaroscuro pp. 264–74.

  57 John to Mavis de Vere Cole, 22 February 1937.

  58 New Statesman and Nation (4 June 1938), pp. 952–3.

  59 Spectator (27 May 1938), p. 96.

  60 Richard Shone Augustus John (1979) p. 3.

  61 Listener (25 May 1938), pp. 1105–7.

  62 ‘History of the Largest Independent Society in England’ Blast No. 2 (July 1915), pp. 80–1.

  63 The Letters of Wyndham Lewis (ed. W. K. Rose 1963), pp. 70–2.

  64 Wyndham Lewis Rude Assignment (1950), p. 128.

  65 Wyndham Lewis The Demon of Progress in the Arts (1954), p. 3.

  66 Listener (13 July 1972).

  67 NLW MS 22780E fol. 139, 22787D fol. 43, 22780E fol. 100.

  68 O’Casey to Gabriel Fallon, 13 May 1926. Quoted in Garry O’Connor Sean O’Casey. A Life (1988), pp. 213–14.

  69 Garry O’Connor Sean O’Casey p. 213.

  70 The other portrait is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The one which he gave to O’Casey as a wedding present is now at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. ‘Blue-green coat, silver-grey sweater, with a gayer note given by an orange handkerchief flowing from the breast-pocket of the coat,’ O’Casey described it; ‘the face set determinedly in contemplation of things seen and heard, the body shrinking back right to the back of the chair, as if to get further away to see and hear more clearly; a sensitive and severe countenance with incisive lines of humour braiding the tightly-closed mouth.’ ‘He [John] is evidently intensely interested in what he sees behind what is understood as my face,’ Sean O’Casey wrote on 16 May 1926.

  71 Sean O’Casey to John, 15 January 1929. NLW MS 22784D fol. 12.

  72 Eileen O’Casey Sean, edited with an Introduction by J. C. Trewin (Pan edition 1973), p. 77·

  73 Raymond Massey A Hundred Different Lives (1979), pp. 90–91.

  74 The set proved too heavy for the scene-shifters. It was designed, like an oil painting, on canvas stretchers. ‘John’s scene was an exterior with a derelict church, with a fine stained glass window,’ Alick Johnstone, the scene painter, remembered. ‘He designed this originally on cartridge paper… and I suggested he should do it on a linen panel in thin oils or aniline dye; which he did, and it was
an enormous success, and, as it was in scale to the scene, was inserted in the church construction.’ Apollo (October 1965), p. 324 n.3.

  75 Shaw to John, 31 October 1929.

  76 Malcolm Easton ‘The Boy David: Augustus John and Ernst Stern’ Apollo (October 1965) pp. 318–25.

  77 Finishing Touches p. 89.

  78 Lady Cynthia Asquith Portrait of Barrie (1950), p. 206.

  79 John to John Davenport n.d.

  80 Later renamed ‘Mas de la Fé’, it was taken over by Alphonse Daudet’s granddaughter-in-law.

  81 Chiaroscuro p. 257.

  82 Marie Mauron to the author, 1969.

  83 Vivien John to Edwin John, September 1939. NLW MS 22312C fol. 123.

  84 Cyril Connolly The Modern Movement (1965), p. 67.

  85 The Times (12 May 1938).

  86 Horizon Volume VIII No. 44 (August 1943), p. 136.

  87 A. R. Thomson to the author n.d.

  88 Cole to John, 17 July 1930. See Roderic Owen with Tristan de Vere Cole Beautiful and Beloved (1974), p. 43.

  89 He was born in the Parish of Woodstock St Hilary: John had suggested the names Iolo Gabriel Augustus Caesar Imperator while Mavis was pregnant.

  90 John to Wyndham Lewis, 15 August 1954.

  91 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (1936).

  92 See Roderic Owen with Tristan de Vere Cole Beautiful and Beloved pp. 89–90.

  93 He later attributed this procedure to a speech made by Shaw’s Captain Bluntschli: ‘…I’m in the artillery; and I have the choice of weapons. If I go, I shall take a machine gun...’ (Arms and the Man, Act III).

  94 John to D. S. MacColl, 14 January 1945.

  95 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (September–October 1915). NLW MS 22777D fol. 93.

  96 John’s portrait of Brigit is at the Southampton Art Gallery.

  97 Nicolette Devas Two Flamboyant Fathers pp. 269–70.

  98 Dorelia to Augustus n.d. (1938), from Mas de Galeron. NLW MS 22783D fols. 122–3.

  99 Paul Ferris Caitlin. The Life of Caitlin Thomas (1993), p. 34.

  100 This portrait, painted in 1937, is at the Glyn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, has four nude drawings of Caitlin, two unfinished oils, and a portrait of her wearing a striped cardigan dated c. 1930.

  101 Paul Ferris to National Museum of Wales, 27 June 1992.

  102 Kathleen Hale A Slender Reputation (1994), p. 91.

  103 The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner (ed. Claire Harman 1994), p. 37.