Augustus John (1878-1961)

Augustus, the younger brother of Gwen John, was born in Wales. He studied at the Slade School, where he was a star pupil, winning great renown for his superb draughtsmanship, from 1894 to 1898. He was awarded a scholarship in 1896 and won the Summer Composition Prize in 1898. Between 1901 and 1904 he was Professor of Painting at Liverpool University. John travelled widely in France, Holland and Belgium, and in 1911-14 painted in Wales with James Dickson Innes and Derwent Lees. He became fascinated by the lifestyle of the gypsies, and lived a bohemian life with his large family first in Dorset and later in Hampshire.

John was a member of the New English Art Club from 1903, and a member of the London Group from 1940. He was an Official War Artist in the First World War for Lord Beaverbrook’s Canadian War Memorials Fund. John was President of the Society of Mural Painters, and became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1921. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1928, but resigned in 1938, and was eventually re-elected in 1940. In his later years he was probably best known for his portraits: his subjects included T.E. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas, George Bernard Shaw and W.B. Yeats. A retrospective exhibition of his drawings was held at the National Gallery in London in 1940, and further retrospectives followed: an Arts Council touring exhibition, 1948-49, an exhibition in the Diploma Gallery of the Royal Academy in 1954, and an exhibition at the Graves Art Gallery in Sheffield in 1956. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1942.