Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25th September 2024

116 103 AUGUSTUS JOHN (1878-1961) Study with Two Women and a Child by the Coast Watercolour wash and pencil, 35 x 40.5cm (133/4 x 16”) Signed € 8,000 - 12,000 Born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, in Wales in 1878, Augustus John was the younger son and third of four children of Edwin William John, a Welsh solicitor and Augusta Smith (1848–1884), who died when he was six, but not before inculcat- ing a love of drawing in both Augustus and his older sister Gwen. At the age of seventeen he briefly attended the Tenby School of Art, before studying at the Slade School of Art in London, under Henry Tonks. Even before his graduation he was considered the most talented draughts- man of his generation, while his sister, Gwen who was with him at the Slade, herself became an important artist in her own right. In 1898, he won the Slade Prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent and afterwards studied in- dependently in Paris where he seems to have been influenced by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. His portraits and other paintings done around 1900 gained attention for their vigour and skilful technique. John was greatly influenced by the work of Old Master painters, especially Peter Paul Rubens. John was known as a colourful per- sonality who adopted an individualistic and bo- hemian lifestyle. Intrigued by gypsy culture and the Romany language, he spent periods trav- eling with gypsy caravans over Wales, Ireland, and Dorset. He painted portraits of many of the leading European personalities—politicians, so- ciety ladies, and literary figures—in a slick and somewhat superficial style, occasionally recap- turing his former boldness and integrity of form. His most significant Irish portraits include those of novelist James Joyce, playwright George Bernard Shaw, and poet William Butler Yeats. Early in his career John became a leading figure in the New English Art Club, where he frequently exhibited in the years up to the First World War. With his vivid manner of portraiture and his abil- ity to catch unerringly some striking and usually unfamiliar aspect of his subject, he supersed- ed Sargent as England’s fashionable portrait painter. In 1928, he was elected a member of the Royal Academy. He was a trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1933 to 1941, and President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters from 1948 to 1953. On his death in 1961, an obituary in The New York Times observed, ‘He was regarded as the grand old man of British painting, and as one of the greatest in British history.’