Augustus John

[1878-1961]

Portrait and decorative painter and etcher

John studied at the Slade School under Tonks, and was a leading member of the New English art club. A Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1933-41, he received the OM in 1942. After an earlier acquaintance, Lawrence and John were to strike up a long friendship when they came together again in Paris during the 1919 Peace Conference. Lawrence sat for him frequently in Paris and later in England, and John remarked in his autobiography, Chiaroscuro (1), 'Lawrence actually enjoyed being painted and always seemed vastly tickled by the results.' The frontispiece oil painting of Feysal was by John, and he also contributed a charcoal drawing of Hogarth and a pen sketch of Lawrence. Of the Hogarth work, shown at John's Alpine Club Gallery exhibition in 1923, Lawrence wrote to the subject 'Yours isn't beautiful: it's savage: but the performance of it is so masterly that one forgives the rudeness & splash of the chalk-work. Was he drunk? Anyway, for once John has worked with his brakes off, letting everything rip. It is (as it should be) the biggest thing in my portrait gallery.' (2)

1	Cape, 1952, p 238
2	L 201, Easter Day [April 1, 1923]

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