Augustus John
The most celebrated draughtsman in Edwardian Britain, and the portraitist everyone sat for.
Augustus John was born at Tenby in 1878 and was the outstanding student of his generation at the Slade, where his facility as a draughtsman was regarded as exceptional even by people who disliked him. He travelled with Romany families, painted in Wales, Provence and Dorset, and became the portrait painter of the age, with Shaw, Hardy, Yeats, Lawrence of Arabia, Dylan Thomas and Tallulah Bankhead among the sitters. His sister Gwen John, long overshadowed, is now the more critically admired of the two. He was made a member of the Order of Merit and died in 1961.
The drawings are the largest part of what comes to market and are the part where quality varies most, since he drew constantly and sold readily; a rapid study and a fully realised portrait drawing carry very different weight. Oils are unique, and the portraits of identifiable sitters behave differently from the unnamed ones. Attribution against his sister and against contemporaries is a live question in the drawings, several of which are unsigned. The signature is normally a plain John. Works on paper have usually been mounted at some point and often show it.
If you own a work by Augustus John
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