Elsewhere in the article, which refers to John’s talent, charm, personal beauty, detestation of humbug and, perhaps optimistically, his sense of decency and magnanimity, and calls him ‘a national monument’, his work is unfavourably compared to that of Paul Nash, Xavier Roussel and Claire Bertrand.
56 Roger Fry to Jean Marchand, 19 December 1921. The Letters of Roger Fry Volume II p. 519. ‘I do not exactly find him [Clive Bell] spiteful. He hasn’t much personal judgement and he’s a terrible snob… it is not by personal antipathy that he castigates a painter but rather by his over-preoccupation to show himself in the forefront of the trend. And since he is an admirable journalist and expresses himself forcefully he inflicts much distress without exactly meaning to.’ Later in this letter, Fry suggests that Bell was not fundamentally a ‘serious’ art critic – ‘he does not make a serious effort to understand it but collects hearsay and remarks from other artists etc.’
57 S. K. Tillyard The Impact of Modernism (1988), pp. 182–3.
58 ‘J. Dickson Innes’, an unpublished essay by Augustus John (formerly owned by William Gaunt).
59 Information from Charles Hampton, to whom I am indebted for many facts concerning Innes’s career.
60 Augustus John ‘Fragment of an Autobiography’, Horizon Volume XI No. 64 (April 1945), p. 25.
61 Randolph Schwabe ‘Reminiscences of Fellow Students’ Burlington Magazine (January 1943), p. 6.
62 Modern English Painters Volume II Innes to Moore (1962), p. 25.
63 Introduction to Catalogue of ‘J. D. Innes Exhibition’, Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, 1961.
64 Augustus John to John Quinn, 10 February 1911. Quinn bought four of Innes’s watercolours.
65 Rough draft for his Introduction to the Catalogue of the Innes exhibition of 1923 at the Chenil Gallery.
66 The cairn was destroyed by a USAAF Flying Fortress bomber that crashed on the peak of Arenig Fawr in 1946.
67 Horizon Volume XV No. 64 (April 1945), p. 255.
68 William Gaunt holograph loc. cit.
69 ‘Some Miraculous Promised Land. J. D. Innes, Augustus John and Derwent Lees in North Wales 1910–13’. Mostyn Art Gallery, Llandudno, 1982.
70 ‘The Late J. D. Innes. A Short Appreciation’ by Augustus John, ARA.
71 For a Derwent Lees ‘John’ see ‘The Round Tree’ at the Aberdeen Art Gallery, which may be compared with John’s own ‘Gypsy in the Sandpit’ at the same gallery.
72 ‘My immense picture of Ottoline is to begin: so my respiration may be audible in Dorset.’ Henry Lamb to Lytton Strachey, 10 April 1910.
73 Boris Anrep recorded this first encounter with Augustus (in a letter to Henry Lamb) thus: ‘If you could creep in my heart and memory which you honoured by some particulars of your relation to John’s – you would feel sike and poisoned by the byle which turns round in me when I first saw John. That was a night-mare, with all appreciation of his powerful and mighty dreadedness, and some ghotic beaty, I could not keep down my heat to some beastly and cruel and vulgar look of brightness which I perceived in his face and demeanour...’ Augustus relished Anrep’s personality and admired his work. In 1913 he persuaded Knewstub to arrange an exhibition of Anrep’s drawings at the Chenil Gallery, and in later years put him in the way of several commissions, from Lady Tredegar and others, for his mosaics.
74 Augustus to Dorelia, from the Hôtel Camille. Probably December 1910. NLW MS 22776D fols. 128–9.
75 John to Quinn, 5 January 1911.
76 John to Quinn, 11 January 1911.
77 Katherine Everett Bricks and Flowers (1949), p. 232.
78 Ibid. pp. 232–3.
79 15 June 1911. ‘It’s an excellent place for the boys and I think we are pretty lucky to have got it. The towns near are perfectly awful, being horrible conglomerations of red brick hutches.’
80 Katherine Everett Bricks and Flowers (1949), p. 232.
81 Augustus to Dorelia from Dingle Bank, July 1911. NLW MS 22776D fols. 143–4.
82 Henry Lamb to Lytton Strachey, 18 October 1911.
CHAPTER VII: BEFORE THE DELUGE
1 Romilly John The Seventh Child (1932), p. 21.
2 Gilbert Spencer to the author, 3 November 1968.
3 Romilly John The Seventh Child p. 25.
4 Ibid. p. 109.
5 Rebecca John Caspar John (1987), p. 31.
6 Romilly John The Seventh Child pp. 116–18.
7 Gerald Brenan A Life of One’s Own (1962), pp. 241–2.
8 Romilly John The Seventh Child p. 134.
9 Ibid. p. 58.
10 Tate Gallery (3730).
11 Aberdeen Art Gallery.
12 National Gallery of Ireland.
13 Pittsburgh Art Gallery.
14 This composition, bought in advance by Quinn, ‘after undergoing continual alterations became gradually unrecognizable and finally disappeared altogether.’ Horizon Volume VI No. 36 (December 1942), p. 430.
15 Detroit Art Gallery. ‘So that’s what became of “the Mumpers”,’ John wrote to Homer Saint Gaudens. ‘They will feel more than ever out of place in that hot bed of Ford’s.’ The picture had been bought at the Quinn sale of 10 February 1927 by René Gimpel. See his Journal d’un Collectionneur (1966), p. 327.
16 Bequeathed by Hugo Pitman to the Tate Gallery. See Nicolette Devas Two Flamboyant Fathers (1966), pp. 103–7.
17 Rebecca John Caspar John p. 31.
18 Romilly John The Seventh Child p. 54.
19 Oliver St John Gogarty. See his It Isn’t This Time of Year at All (1954), p. 181.
20 John to Alick Schepeler n.d.
21 Michaela Pooley to the author, 1969.
22 Chiaroscuro p. 103.
23 The source for this is Quinn’s diary – John having told him. In John’s published account he relates that ‘my caller, though uninvited, entered the house and with great good-nature made herself at home.’
24 Horizon Volume V No. 26 (Februry 1942), p. 127.
25 John Stewart Collis Marriage and Genius (1963), pp. 117–18.
26 Ibid. p. 64.
27 Chiaroscuro p. 116.
28 Frida Strindberg Marriage with Genius (1937), p. 20.
29 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (September 1911). NLW MS 22776D fols. 155–6, 158.
30 John Quinn to Jacob Epstein, 7 August 1915. Quinn Collection, New York Public Library.
31 Quinn’s unpublished diary, p. 16.
32 Horizon Volume VI No. 32 (August 1942), p. 131.
33 Ibid., loc. cit.
34 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (September 1911). NLW MS 22776D fol. 162.
35 B. L. Reid The Man from New York (1968), p. 105.
36 John to Ottoline Morrell, 27 September 1911. University of Texas.
37 Augustus to Dorelia (September 1911). NLW MS 22776D fols. 160–1.
38 Quinn to James Gibbons Huneker, 15 November 1911.
39 In a letter to Huneker (15 November 1911) Quinn gave the inventory of this tour. ‘We did Chartres, Tours, Amboise, Blois, Montélimar, Le Puy (a wonderful old place), Orange, Avignon, Aix en Provence (where we saw some of the most wonderful tapestries in the world), Marseilles, Martigues (where John spent over a year), Aiguemortes, Arles and Nîmes; back by way of Le Puy, St Étienne, Moulins, Bourges and into Paris by way of Fontainebleau. John knew interesting people at Avignon, Aix, Marseilles, Martigues, Arles and Nîmes… We careered through the heart of the Cévennes twice...’
40 Quinn to Huneker, 15 November 1911.
41 Quinn to Conrad, 17 November 1911.
42 Chiaroscuro p. 122.
43 Horizon Volume VI No. 32 (August 1942), p. 133.
44 The motto comes from line 12 in the 106th letter of Seneca to Lucilius, ‘Non Scholae sed vitae discimas’ (‘Not for school but for life we learn’).
45 Wyndham Lewis to John n.d. (April 1910). NLW MS 22783D fols. 28–31.
46 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (c. September 1913). NLW MS 22777D fols. 25–6.
47 John to Quinn, 23 May 1910.
48 On 27 September 1911.
49 Romilly John The Seventh Child p. 62.
50 Gerald Brenan A Life of One’s Own p. 147. See also Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (January-February 1915). NLW MS 22777D fols. 63–4.
51 Augustus to Dorelia, 20 May 1922. NLW MS 22778D fols. 33–4.
52 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (August 1912). NLW MS 22777D fol. 11.
53 Romilly John to the author, 9 December 1972.
54 In a letter to the author, January 1969.
55 Rebecca John Caspar John p. 36.
56 Romilly John The Seventh Child p. 62.
57 Tom Pocock ‘A Name to live Up to’ Evening Standard (5 June 1967).
58 Rebecca John Caspar John pp. 41, 42.
59 Poppet John ‘The Fire and the Fountain’ Listener (20 March 1975), p. 361.
60 Ibid. p. 360.
61 Vivien White to the author, 1971.
62 John to Ottoline Morrell, 28 February 1912.
63 John to Quinn, 9 May 1912. Meningitis was afterwards treated with streptomycin and penicillin. ‘It’s maddening to think that Pyramus could have been cured of meningitis a few years later,’ John wrote to his son-in-law Bill Bergne in 1941. NLW MS 22022C.
64 John to Sampson, March 1912. NLW MS 14928D fol. 99.
65 John to Sampson, 13 March 1912. NLW MS 21459E fol. 44.
66 John to Ottoline Morrell, 10 March 1912.
67 John to Quinn, 9 May 1912.
68 John to Quinn, 8 May 1913.
69 Oliver St John Gogarty It Isn’t This Time of Year at All p. 180.
70 ‘To Augustus John’ by Oliver St John Gogarty in The Collected Poems of Oliver St John Gogarty (1951), pp. 27–30.
71 Horizon Volume IV No. 22 (October 1941), p. 289.
72 Oliver St John Gogarty It Isn’t This Time of Year at All pp. 178, 181.
73 Ulick O’Connor Oliver St John Gogarty (1964 edn), p. 149. See also Ulick O’Connor ‘Blue Eyes and Yellow Beard’ Spectator (10 November 1961).
74 Augustus to Dorelia 1912, 1915. NLW MS 22777D fols. 10, 86, 97–8, 99–100.
75 Oliver St John Gogarty As I was Going Down Sackville Street (1954 edn), p. 247.
76 Oliver St John Gogarty It Isn’t This Time of Year at All p. 183.
77 Painted in August 1917, one portrait depicts Gogarty as a rather flagging dandy lit up with what Ulick O’Connor called ‘elfin vitality’ – though to Gogarty himself this image looked
like Caesar late returned
Exhausted from a long campaign.
In his poem ‘To My Portrait, By Augustus John’, he reveals that the painting provoked some deep questions.
Is it a warning? And, to me
Your criticism upon Life?
If this be caused by Poetry
What should a Poet tell his wife?
78 Horizon Volume I No. 22 (October 1941), p. 286.
79 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (October 1915). NLW MS 22777D fols. 99–100.
80 Nicolette Devas Two Flamboyant Fathers p. 21. There is a reproduction of this portrait, which is in the National Gallery of Ireland, facing p. 32.
81 Nicolette Devas Two Flamboyant Fathers p. 28.
82 Ibid. p. 25.
83 Horizon Volume IV No. 22 (October 1941), p. 287.
84 John to Quinn, 6 August 1912.
85 Chiaroscuro p. 93.
86 John had painted a full-length portrait of Ida when she was pregnant. It is now in the National Gallery of Wales, Cardiff. ‘It is a picture of a pregnant woman, painted with the assured brushwork of Hals or Manet, and a tenderness reminiscent of Rembrandt’s,’ wrote R. L. Charles, the Keeper of Art: ‘mastery, depth and intimacy combined in a way hardly paralleled in British painting of its time.’ Amgueddfa: Bulletin of the National Museum of Wales No. 12 (Winter 1972), p. 29.
87 John’s portraits of Lord Howard de Walden and Lady Howard de Walden are now in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff. The latter is dated 1912–22. In her autobiography, Pages from my Life (1965), Lady Howard de Walden wrote that after innumerable sittings over ten years, John ended up with ‘a horrible picture’ which he painted over. ‘I’m very sorry Margot takes so pessimistic a view of her portrait and that her nerve has gone,’ John wrote to Howard de Walden on 22 September 1923. ‘I’m quite sure I can hit her off now and am anxious to retrieve my character and incidentally earn my hire (paid).’ To make amends he offered to give Lady Howard de Walden another picture, a canvas 12 feet by 15 feet showing two Welsh gypsies, a mother and daughter, in a mountainous landscape ‘talking to a life-sized obviously German professor in a bowler hat!’ But it was too big to get out of the house. See Portraits by Augustus John: Family, Friends and the Famous (National Museum of Wales 1988).
88 John to Quinn, 11 October 1911. It is an impression of Holbrooke quite different from Beatrice Dunsany’s description of ‘a pathetic, good-natured deaf child’ who played the piano beautifully. See Mark Amory Lord Dunsany: A Biography (1972), pp. 104–6.
89 John to Mrs Nettleship, 8 January 1913.
90 Epstein to Quinn, 11 January 1913.
91 John to Dorelia n.d. (January 1913). Written from Hôtel du Nord, Cours Belsance, Marseilles. NLW MS 22777D fol. 16.
92 ‘For days afterward I found myself under the hallucination of meeting people on the street who might have posed for them.’ John remembered the studio as being ‘covered with statues’, and Modigliani as ‘a naive and modest boy when not on the hashish’. These were the first sculptures Modigliani had sold and he was much encouraged. According to one source, ‘he was found unconscious in an abandoned shack in Montparnasse, and was rescued and cared for by Epstein and the painter Augustus John.’ See Pierre Sichel Modigliani (1967), pp. 213–16. After the war John painted ‘In Memoriam Amedeo Modigliani’, an arrangement of book, cactus, guitar, tapestry and one of the two heads he had bought. ‘The book represents his Bible – Les Chants de Maldoror,’ John explained to the art critic D. S. MacColl; ‘the cactus, Les Fleurs du Mal; the guitar, the deep chords he sometimes struck; the fallen tapestry, the ruins of time.’
93 In the summer of 1912, Gertler wrote that John ‘proceeded to give me some very useful “tips” on tempera,’ and by September he was writing: ‘Just think, I have actually done a painting in that wonderful medium tempera, the medium of our old Great friends!… I love tempera.’ See John Woodeson Mark Gertler (1972), pp. 81, 100.
94 This cartoon, measuring 92 ½ by 232 inches, depicting a family group resting and cooking at their camp fire, was drawn in charcoal on paper laid on linen, but not squared for transfer or pricked through for tracing. It was shown as a single-work exhibition from 29 July to 4 August 1994 to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Mercury Gallery in Cork Street, London.
95 This picture had originally been promised to Quinn in 1910. Quinn’s inquiries about it met with little response until 19 February 1914, when John announced that he was now able to ‘simplify the problem by confessing that I have painted it out some time back. I had it down here [Alderney] to work on, and after reflection decided I could not finish it to my satisfaction (without the original models) and thought I would paint you another picture which would be a great deal better. The cartoon lately at the N. English [The Flute of Pan] was started with that object. In course of doing it I added the right portion of the design, consisting of landscape which makes it about a third larger than “Forza e Amore”. As to Lane’s claim to this last – it originally formed part of a much larger scheme which on my break with him I did not carry out… I am damn sorry you were so set on the “F. e A”. I was merely conscientious in painting it out as I did. But you will like The Flute of Pan better and the price of course will be the same.’
Quinn was horrified at this news, and John assured him (16 March 1914) he was not alone. ‘I was at Lane’s lately and told him I had painted out “Forza e Amore”. Words failed him to express his horror… He implored me to send it up to him and let him have the coat of white I gave it taken off. Shall I? I suppose I was a bloody foo
l to do it.’ Three months later (24 June 1914) he confirmed that Quinn had ‘the only real claim to the picture’ – adding that he was now certain the white coat could not be removed successfully.
96 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (spring 1913). NLW MS 22777D fol. 20.
97 John to Hope-Johnstone n.d.
98 Augustus to Dorelia January–February 1914. NLW MS 22777D fols. 34, 36, 39.
99 John to Ottoline Morrell, July 1914.
100 In a letter to his brother James Strachey. British Library.
101 Augustus to Dorelia (summer 1912). NLW MS 22777D fols. 9, 11.
102 Augustus to Dorelia (1915). NLW MS 22777D fols. 87–8, 89.
103 Augustus to Dorelia (June 1916). NLW 22777D fols. 120–1.
104 Augustus to Dorelia (summer 1916). NLW MS 22777D fol. 130.
105 John to Hope-Johnstone, 1916.
106 Horizon Volume VIII No. 44 (August 1943), p. 140.
107 Llwynythyl was later taken by the composer Granville Bantock. His daughter remembers that John ‘had drawn an enormous mural in white chalk of angel figures covering the entire end wall of the sitting-room… We discovered a whole pile of discarded oil paints and brushes, together with many crumpled sketches. We salvaged and smoothed out two of these sketches and I still have one of them… an amusing cartoon of a woman sitting at a table and trying to work; around her pots and pans are flying through the air, a tradesman presents bills and a half-naked baby screams on the floor.’
108 See Mark Amory Lord Dunsany: A Biography (1972), pp. 73–4.
109 John to Hope-Johnstone, 20 February 1914.
110 John to Quinn, 19 February 1914.
111 John went out sketching with Munnings, listening carefully to Munnings’s theory that a horse’s coat reflects the light of day, and then, after silent reflection, gruffly demanding: ‘If you see a brown horse, why not paint it brown?’ Many years later John told E. J. Rousuck that Munnings’s horses had ‘better picture quality, better groupings’ than Stubbs’s. See Reginald Pound The Englishman (1962), pp. 59, 61, 201.
112 Interview with the author, 1969. See also Margaret Laing ‘Dame Laura Knight’ Evening Standard (5 November 1968), p. 12.
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