Augustus John
| Augustus John | |
|---|---|
"Artist John," on a 1928 Time magazine cover
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|
| Born |
Augustus Edwin John 4 January 1878 Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales |
| Died | 31 October 1961 (aged 83) Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England |
| Nationality | Welsh |
| Known for | painter |
| Movement | Post-Impressionism |
| Awards |
Order of Merit Royal Academician |
Augustus Edwin John OM RA (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom. He was the brother of the painter Gwen John.
"Augustus was celebrated first for his brilliant figure drawings, and then for a new technique of oil sketching. His work was favourably compared in London with that of Gauguin and Matisse. He then developed a style of portraiture that was imaginative and often extravagant, catching an instantaneous attitude in his subjects."
John was born at Tenby in Pembrokeshire, the younger son and third of four children in his family. His father was Edwin William John, a Welsh solicitor; his mother, Augusta Smith from a long line of Sussex master plumbers, died young when he was six, but not before inculcating 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, then left Wales for London, studying at the Slade School of Art UCL in London (his sister, Gwen John, was with him at the Slade and became an important artist in her own right), where he became the star pupil of drawing teacher Henry Tonks, and even before his graduation was recognised as the most talented draughtsman of his generation.
In the summer of 1897, John suffered a serious head injury when he hit submerged rocks diving into the sea at Tenby, and the lengthy convalescence that followed seems to have actually stimulated his adventurous spirit and accelerated his artistic growth. In 1898, he won the Slade Prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent. John afterward studied independently in Paris where he seems to have been influenced by Puvis de Chavannes.
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