Augustus John (133 page)

5
  ‘Drawings by Augustus E. John’ at the Carfax Gallery, December 1907. ‘Knewstub’s peculiarities have ended by tiring me out,’ he had written to Trevor Haddon (11 February 1907), ‘and I have arranged for my next show to be elsewhere.’

6
  John to Will Rothenstein.

7
  Delacroix to Félix Guillemardet, 1 December 1893.

8
  John to Will Rothenstein, April 1907.

9
  John to Alick Schepeler from Equihen.

10
  Now in the Manchester City Art Gallery. An unfinished study, one of several, is in the Tate Gallery (5298).

11
  One of these, in pencil and wash on tinted paper, is at the National Portrait
Gallery, London. It has what appear to be spots of Beaujolais on it. Yeats is wearing a mackintosh.

12
  W. B. Yeats to John Quinn, 4 October 1907.

13
  John to Henry Lamb, 24 August 1907.

14
  John to Henry Lamb.

15
  Keith Clements
Henry Lamb. The Artist and his Friends
(1985), p. 49.

16
  
Ibid.
p. 35.

17
  
The Flight of the Mind. The Letters of Virginia Woolf
Volume I
1888–1912
(ed. Nigel Nicolson 1975), p. 215.

18
  
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
Volume II
1920–1924
(ed. Anne Olivier Bell 1978), p· 54.

19
  Ida John to Augustus John n.d. (November 1906). NLW MS 22782D fols. 84–5.

20
  Frances Partridge
Everything to Lose. Diaries 1945–1960
(1985), p. 192.

21
  John to Henry Lamb, 25 June 1907.

22
  Rebecca John
Caspar John
(1987), pp. 21–2.

23
  John to Ursula Nettleship n.d. (September 1907). NLW MS 22775C fols. 84–7.

24
  Edward Nettleship to Ursula Nettleship July 1907. NLW MS 22790D fols. 66–8.

25
  Letter (undated, but probably September 1907) from Dorelia to Augustus. NLW MS 22783D fols. 112–13.

26
  
Ibid.

27
  Dorelia to Augustus n.d. (September 1907). NLW MS 22783D fols. 110–11.

28
  Augustus to Dorelia. NLW MS 22776D fols. 55–6.

29
  
Chiaroscuro
p. 69.

30
  ‘French Fisher-boy’ was owned for many years by Judge Stephen Tumim, and is now in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.

31
  See Malcolm Easton and Michael Holroyd
The Art of Augustus John
(1974), pls.7 and 42.

32
  Originally called ‘Woman Smiling’, it reversed its title in 1910 when it was shown at the Manchester City Art Gallery in a loan exhibition of John’s work. It was the first picture bought (for £225 [equivalent to £10,600 in 1996] at Manchester) by the Contemporary Art Society, founded that year to acquire works by living artists for loan or gift to public galleries. It was also the first picture presented by the Society to the Tate Gallery (3171).

33
  Miranda Seymour
Ottoline Morrell. Life on the Grand Scale
(1992), p. 71.

34
  
Ibid.
p. 74.

35
  
Ottoline: The Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell
(ed. Robert Gathorne-Hardy), p. 141.

36
  Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (May 1908). NLW MS 22776D fol. 79.

37
  
Truth
(6 March 1920),
Everyman
(13 March 1920), the
Star
(11 March 1920),
Daily News
(2 March 1920). See also
Manchester Guardian
(1 March 1920: ‘it makes life more exciting and fantastic and unlikely’), and
Spectator
(6 March 1920): ‘a brilliant performance… one of those pictures we recognise at once as a new thing, with a distinct life of its own, come into the world’).

38
  ‘I am delighted you snubbed those stupid and impertinent journalists,’ Augustus wrote to her (14 March 1920). ‘I have kept them at bay as far as possible but they are very persistent. Even if one is induced to express an opinion it is sure to appear in a distorted form and minus the points.’ Two years later, on 1 February 1922, he wrote in answer to a letter from Ottoline about the picture: ‘I still have your portrait. People don’t often buy other people’s portraits. It’s rather a cruel predicament as you know and yet I like it. I think I had priced it at £500 at the show but you can have it for much less. Would £200 be too much?’ Ten days later he is hedging: ‘In the
meanwhile I have collected some pictures for a show at Pittsburgh U.S.A. and I thought of including your portrait among them as I think with all its deficiencies (and tooth-powder) it is one of my best in some ways. Would you mind letting it go for the show, and then we could decide later if you really wanted it, or try another.’ On 9 January 1925 he informs her: ‘The price I have put on your portrait is £400 [equivalent to £10,000 in 1996]. Is that too much?’ Eight months later (2 September 1925) he writes: ‘I am delighted that on seeing the portrait again you still think well of it. It isn’t good enough but I think it has distinction. I am sorry the price I put on it is too much – but I would not part with it to anyone else for less than twice that sum – and I know I shall be able to get it or more one day.’ The following month, some seventeen years after he had begun this portrait, their transactions were at an end – and at once he suggested beginning another picture. ‘Oh yes – your portrait is full of faults and I know I should love to do another.’ By now Ottoline was middle-aged, and feeling perhaps that there was not enough time left for another portrait, she did not accept this offer.

39
  Quentin Bell
Virginia Wool/Volume
I (1972), p. 145.

40
  
Ottoline: The Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell
p. 157.

41
  
Ibid.

42
  
Ibid.
p. 158.

43
  Quentin Bell
Virginia Woolf
Volume
I p. 124.

44
  
Ottoline: The Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell
p. 159.

45
  ‘How good of you to get the Duke of Portland to buy my drawings,’ Augustus to Ottoline Morrell (7 July 1908). The 6th Duke of Portland was Ottoline’s half-brother.

46
  ‘My friend Lamb has just 40 francs left to carry him through the summer… Epstein is slowly being killed in London. It seems to be a general superstition that artists can live on air – whereas the truth is their appetites, like their other capacities, are exceptionally good,’ Augustus wrote to Ottoline (20 September 1908). Later that month he wrote: ‘You were good sending that cheque to my friend Lamb… Epstein is I think still very hard put to it… It would be grand if Portland or anyone else gave him a commission.’ With characteristic generosity Ottoline gave Epstein an order for a garden statue and took likely clients to visit him, including W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, who commissioned him to do a bust of herself.

47
  
Ottoline: The Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell
p. 163.

48
  
Ottoline: The Early Memoirs of Lady Ottoline Morrell
p. 158. See also Sandra Jobson Darroch
Ottoline. The Life of Ottoline Morrell
(1975), p. 66.

49
  
Ibid.
p. 155;
ibid.
p. 67.

50
  Sandra Jobson Darroch
Ottoline. The Life of Ottoline Morrell
p. 65.

51
  Miranda Seymour
Ottoline Morrell. Life on the Grand Scale
p. 84.

52
  John to Ottoline Morrell, 30 May 1908.

53
  Henry Lamb to Ottoline Morrell n.d. Quoted in Sandra Jobson Darroch
Ottoline. The Life of Lady Ottoline Morrell
p. 76.

54
  Ottoline Morrell’s diary May 1910. Quoted in Miranda Seymour
Ottoline Morrell. Life on the Grand Scale
p. 98.

55
  Keith Clements
Henry Lamb. The Artist and his Friends
(1985), p. 147.

56
  
Ibid.
pp. 146–7.

57
  Quoted in Miranda Seymour
Ottoline Morrell. Life on the Grand Scale
p. 97.

58
  Royall Tyler was the author of
Spain: A Study of Her Life and Arts,
‘a capital straightforward business-like book… My only objection is to the title, as I think Spain is a neuter noun,’ A. E. Housman wrote to the publisher Grant Richards (6 July 1909). Richards himself had more to object to, since Tyler then ran off with his wife.

59
  ‘Charlie McEvoy nearly killed me in the evening by his drolleries,’ Augustus
wrote to Lamb (24 August 1907) after an early visit to Westcot. ‘He has recently had a play put on by the Stage Society which was a great success, the most enlightened critics combining in a chorus of praise. He sketched me the plot of his next play which also endangered my life. It is regrettable I am at the mercy of these comedians.’ In 1907, McEvoy had written ‘David Ballard’ and he was also the author of ‘The Village Wedding’, which was performed by the village players at Aldbourne. In 1908 Augustus had done an etching of him (CD 20) described by Campbell Dodgson as ‘a wonderful example of direct and unprejudiced portraiture, a perfect likeness and a masterly, though by no means beautiful, etching, which ranks by general consent as one of the best of Mr John’s plates’. It was first shown at the fourth exhibition of the Society of Twelve in 1908.

60
  Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (April 1908). NLW MS 227760 fols. 75–6.

61
  Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (May 1908). NLW MS 22775C fol. 73.

62
  John to Wyndham Lewis, 28 June 1908.

63
  Ethel Nettleship to Caspar John, 27 June 1951. NLW MS 22790D fols. 34–7.

64
  John to Ottoline Morrell, 7 July 1908.

65
  Alison Thomas
Portraits of Women
(1994), pp. 96, 97.

66
  Edna Clarke Hall to Rosa Waugh, 15 March 1907. Quoted in Alison Thomas
Portraits of Women
p. 105.

67
  Alison Thomas
Portraits of Women
p. 110.

68
  
Ibid.
p. 111.

69
  
Ibid.
p. 112.

70
  Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (September-October 1915). NLW MS 22777D fol. 90.

71
  Alison Thomas
Portraits of Women
p. 111.

72
  A pencil-and-watercolour study for this picture is in the Tate Gallery (3198).

73
  John to Ottoline Morrell, 11 November 1908.

74
  Letter to the author, 25 November 1968.

75
  John to Lamb, September 1908.

76
  
Ibid.

77
  From ‘The Wanderers’ by Arthur Symons in
Amoris Victima
(1897).

78
  
The Swagger Portrait. Grand Manner Portraiture in Britain from Van Dyck to Augustus John
(Tate Gallery 1992), pl. 76, p. 214.

79
  Helen Fry suffered from an incurable thickening of the bone of her skull and in 1910 was consigned to a mental home until her death in 1937.

80
  Malcolm Easton
Augustus John: Portraits of the Artist’s Family
(1970).

81
  Christopher Hassall
Edward Marsh
(1959), pp. 145, 148.

82
  
Letters from Edward Thomas to Gordon Bottomley
(ed. R. George Thomas 1968), p. 144.

83
  ‘Time, You Old Gipsy Man’ by Ralph Hodgson.

84
  John’s contributions to the
Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society
are:
New Series,
Vol. 2, ‘Wandering Sinnte’ (frontispiece), pp. 197–9;
Russian Gypsy Songs,
Vol. 3, pp. 251–2;
French Romani Vocabulary,
Vol. 4, pp. 217–35;
Russian Gypsies at Marseilles and Milan,
Vol. 5, pp. 135–8;
The Songs of Fabian de Castro,
pp. 204–18;
O Bovedantuna,
‘Calderari Gypsies from the Caucasus’ (frontispiece).
Third Series,
Vol. 7, ‘Portrait of Dr. Sampson’ (opp. p. 97); Vol. 17, ‘Self-Portrait’ (frontispiece), p. 136;
Le Chateau de Lourmarin,
Vol. 23, pp. 120–22;
Portrait of a Russian Gypsy,
Vol. 27, pp. 155–6;
Keyserling on Hungarian Gypsy Music,
Vol. 36, pp. 81–2;
Miss Jo Jones’s Frontispiece,
Vol. 39, ‘Les Saintes–Maries de la Mer, with Sainte Sara, l’Egyptienne, and a Child’ (opp. p. 3), pp. 3–4, ‘Dora E. Yates’.

85
  John to Ottoline Morrell, 8 April 1909.

86
  Ottoline’s daughter.

87
  John to Ottoline Morrell, 9 July 1909.

88
  
John to Ottoline Morrell, 22 July 1909.

89
  
Augustus John – the pattern of the painter’s career,
BBC Third Programme (15 April 1954).

90
  Jessie G. Stewart
Jane Ellen Harrison: A Portrait from Letters
(1959), pp. 129–30. The portrait was hung in Newnham College, Cambridge. See also Sandra J. Harrison
Jane Harrison. The Mask and the Self
(1988), pp. 162–3. The painting is still at Newnham College. It greatly shocked the Provost of Eton, M. R. James, this being ‘one of the rare occasions when I saw him in a temper,’ Sir Gerald Kelly wrote to the Principal of Newnham, Dame Myra Curtis (21 January 1954). ‘We regard it as one of our treasures,’ she replied. ‘…The cause of the shock to Montague James remains mysterious.’ (25 January, 5 June 1954). This correspondence is in the archives of the Royal Academy in London.

91
  Jane Harrison to D. S. MacColl, 15 August 1909.

92
  John to Jessie G. Stewart, October 1957.