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#augustusjohn
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Thank you to everyone who's pre-ordered the paperback - with Gwen and Augustus framed in their new, colour popping, cover design. It's properly out on March 19. #PicadorBooks @womensprize.bsky.social #GwenJohn #AugustusJohn #BritishArtists
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Tomorrow on @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social at 3:20pm: “Something in City” (1950) where a city gent leads a double life as a bohemian artist. We featured it in ep 24 and art historian #DavidBoydHaycock talked about a real life Soho bohemian artist, #AugustusJohn sohobitespodcast.com/episode/24
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Painted in 1904, this portrait comes from Welsh artist Augustus John’s early, high-intensity years, when he was gaining fame for psychologically charged likenesses. The title “Ardor” (“burning feeling” or “intensity”) guides the emotional register. This isn’t a neutral likeness so much as an intimate study of presence. The sitter is Dorothy “Dorelia” McNeill, a central figure in Augustus John’s life and work as his partner, muse, and subject of many portraits during the 1900s. A tightly framed oil portrait shows a young Dorelia from the chest up against a soft, smoky grey ground. She turns her head slightly while looking back toward our left, her dark eyes steady and alert. Her skin is fair/light with warm blush across both cheeks as bright highlights catch her forehead, nose, and cheekbones, giving her face a living sheen. Her dark hair is swept back from a high hairline and falls in loose curls at the temples. The mouth forms a small, closed-lip smile that is more private than performative while her raised brow line and half-lidded gaze add a hint of amused confidence. She wears a black, collarless jacket fastened with small round buttons, opened to a white blouse. The paint is most precise around the eyes and mouth. Elsewhere, edges soften and brushwork loosens, letting her face emerge from shadow without hard outlines. Fine surface cracking is visible across the background and hair. Dorelia’s sidelong glance and half-smile suggest she’s in on a thought we don’t fully share. With no props, jewelry, or setting to “explain” her, the painting insists on the authority of expression. She is not softened into sweetness or decorum, but presented as self-possessed … warm, watchful, and unyielding about the boundary between observer and observed. The restrained palette of charcoal, black, muted cream, and flesh tones, intensifies that effect, through small details like the tilt of her head, the pull of light on skin, and that one-of-a-kind, almost-spoken smirk.
“Ardor” by Augustus John (Welsh) - Oil on canvas / 1904 - Manchester Art Gallery (Manchester, England) #WomenInArt #ManchesterArtGallery #AugustusJohn #PortraitofaWoman #WomanPortrait #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #OilOnCanvas #ArtOfTheDay #arte #OilPainting #WelshArt #BritishArt #WelshArtist
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W B Yeats - 1907 Augustus John OM - Tate.org
#fine-art #portrait #man #AugustusJohn #Welsh #Post-Impressionism
www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks...
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Rocznica urodzin Augustusa Johna (1878–1961), walijskiego malarza znanego z ekspresyjnych portretów i życia w stylu bohemy. Sztuka? Tak. Charakter? Jeszcze większy. (fot. Wikipedia) #AugustusJohn
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🎨 #AugustusJohn, Welsh painter and illustrator, was #BOTD 4 January 1878. #Art #Painting #Illustration
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By the late 1930s and early 1940s, Welsh artist Augustus Edwin John was Britain’s most famous portraitist, yet he remained drawn to people at society’s margins like Romani families, working-class models, and visitors from the British empire. In London and Wales, he encountered Black Caribbean sitters whose presence in wartime Britain was growing through service, study, and migration. This painting records one such meeting. A young woman of West Indian heritage is shown half-length, turned slightly to her right but raising her chin and gaze above ours, so we see her as alert, intelligent, and self-possessed. Her skin is a warm copper-brown, modeled with broad, broken strokes that catch light across her forehead, nose, and cheekbones. Dark, springy curls spread around her shoulders, painted in looping, quick marks over a grey-ochre ground. Her eyes are dark and reflective as strong brows give the face structure. She wears a simple, earth-toned garment with a pale strap on the left, suggestive of everyday clothing rather than costume. The background is roughly scumbled, without setting, pushing our attention to the woman’s face and the agency of her look. John avoids caricature: the palette is restrained, the pose dignified, and the looseness of the paint lets the sitter stay individual rather than “type.” Like his related works “The Two Jamaican Girls” (1937) and other portraits of women of color, it both reflects the imperial world that brought artist and sitter together and quietly insists on her beauty, intellect, and modernity within it. Augustus John trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, where he was hailed as the most brilliant student of his generation, admired for the freedom of his line and his bohemian independence. After early success, he became sought after for portraits of writers, aristocrats, and political figures, but he repeatedly turned away from elite commissions to paint people he found visually and culturally compelling.
“A West Indian Girl” by Augustus Edwin John (Welsh) – Oil on canvas / c. 1940 – National Museum Wales (Cardiff) #WomenInArt #AugustusJohn #CaribbeanPortraiture #BlackPortraiture #art #artText #artwork #WelshArtist #AugustusEdwinJohn #arte #BlueskyArt #1940sArt #PortraitofaWoman #NationalMuseumWales
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Three distinct artistic portrayals of the same woman across different mediums and styles. On the left is a bronze sculpture bust featuring a smooth, stylized face wearing a gleaming, polished golden helmet, evoking a modern yet classical sensibility. The central panel is a painting with bold, expressive brushstrokes and a vivid red background, depicting her seated on a patterned couch, wearing a deep black dress with a round brooch at the chest, her hands gently clasped in her lap. The rightmost panel is a more realistic oil painting, presenting the woman in a confident stance with her hand on her hip, dressed in a crisp white blouse, green cardigan, and brown skirt, her expression calm yet assertive against a muted backdrop. Together, the three works highlight different interpretations of the subject’s personality and presence through sculpture and painting.
Jacob Epstein, Iris Beerbohn Tree (1915) + Vanessa Bell, Iris Tree (1915) + Augustus John, Miss Iris Tree (1920)
Three portraits of the same woman: Iris Tree—poet, muse and actor
#SideBySide #Art #ArtHistory #VanessaBell #AugustusJohn #JacobEpstein #Model #Portrait #IrisTree
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Signing copies at the National Gallery's elegant new book shop @nationalgallery
#nationalgallery
#ArtistsSiblingsVisionaries
#gwenjohnartist
#augustusjohn
@tatebritain
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Born in Alabama in 1902, American actress Tallulah Brockman Bankhead began her stage career in London during the 1920s. Known for her sultry voice and languorous sophistication, Bankhead had a magnetic quality that made her a popular success. While performing in London, Bankhead decided to "consent to immortality" and sit for the talented and flamboyant artist Augustus John. "At that time," she confided in her 1952 autobiography, "I was the toast of London and that was some toast, dahling." Bankhead is portrayed by John as a pensive young woman in a dusty rose, intricately patterned gown sitting gracefully, her contemplative expression and elegant attire creating a mood of quiet glamour. She has light blonde, shoulder-length wavy hair styled in a fashionable manner for the 1920s. Her facial features are delicate and well-defined; she possesses pale skin, blue eyes, and her lips are painted a distinct reddish hue. John, a recently elected member of the Royal Academy and famous for his uninhibited lifestyle as much as his artistic talent, was himself the well-known in London. Bankhead made John promise to sell her the finished portrait for £1,000. Until passing in 1968, she kept the painting on display in her bedroom, where both business associates and friends gathered to visit the incessantly smoking, charismatic actress. In America, Bankhead twice won the coveted New York Drama Critics Award: first in 1939 for her powerful performance as Regina in "The Little Foxes," and later in 1942 for her role as Sabina in "The Skin of Our Teeth." In the late 1940s, Time magazine called her “the theater’s first personality.” Her career spanned other media as well: in Hollywood, she notably starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (1944); on radio—billed as “the glamorous, unpredictable Tallulah Bankhead”—she emceed NBC’s Sunday-night The Big Show (1950–51). On television, she co-hosted All Star Review and was a popular guest on I Love Lucy and The Jack Benny Show.
"Tallulah Bankhead" by Augustus John (Welsh) - Oil on canvas / 1930 - National Portrait Gallery (Washington DC) #WomenInArt #PortraitofaWoman #art #ArtText #artwork #BritishArtist #trendsetter #portrait #NationalPortraitGallery #Smithsonian #AugustusJohn #WelshArtist #TallulahBankhead #celebrity
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Portrait of Richard Hughes by Augustus John
Pleased to encounter this #AugustusJohn portrait of Richard Hughes @TenbyMuseum - author of A High Wind in Jamaica. He’s also often credited as writer of the BBC’s first radio drama - Danger (1924), though Phyllis Twigg’s The Truth about Father Christmas predates that (Dec 1922) #art #radiohistory
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Artists, Siblings, Visionaries by #JudithMackrell #Art #Book #Review – the remarkable lives of #GwenJohn and #AugustusJohn
Gwen’s talent vastly outshone her brother’s – but both are treated with subtlety in this outstanding dual #biography
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...
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"The Blue Pool," was created by Welsh artist Augustus John in 1911. It depicts a woman, believed to be John's muse and lifelong companion Dorothy McNeill, relaxing by the edge of a vividly colored lake. The painting is known for its vibrant hues, particularly the turquoise of the water, which is caused by light diffraction from clay particles. John used an Impressionist and Post-Impressionist style, applying paint directly to wood panels to achieve a textured effect. The scene is set at a former clay pit in Dorset, England, which has been transformed into a lake. The painting is currently held in the Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums collection.
Augustus John (Wales, UK 1878-1961)
"The Blue Pool" (1911)
oil on panel. 52.5 x 73.1 x 6 cm
Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, Scotland
#ArtSky #AugustusJohn #Post-Impressionist
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🎨 How sibling rivals #AugustusJohn and #GwenJohn tormented each other.
He was a wild, glamorous, promiscuous painter, the toast of the early C20th, whose life and #art eclipsed his sister’s.
But, after dying almost unknown, Gwen is now having the last laugh.
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...
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Augustus Edwin John was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain with Virginia Woolf declaring that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning." Luisa, Marchesa Casati Stampa di Soncino (born Luisa Adele Rosa Maria Amman), was an Italian heiress, socialite, and patroness of the arts in early 20th-century Europe. When both her parents died by the time she was fifteen, Luisa and her older sister, Francesca were reportedly the wealthiest women in Italy. Originally full length but cut down by the artist, this portrait depicts the Marchesa in silk pajamas, which float elegantly around her slim, pale arms and torso. With her left hand provocatively on her hip, she turns to survey the viewer, her lips moist, her large kohl-darkened eyes glowing beneath a mass of vivid, reddish-orange dyed curls. The amorphous mountain terrain background and the subject's smile allude to Leonardo's Mona Lisa, although La Casati is more seductive than mysterious. The Marchesa was notorious for her evocation of exotic and historical characters, typically at fancy dress parties. She appears in some guise or other in half of the over 125 known portrayals of her. The AGO's portrait is one of the most successful, John's bravura style matching the Marchesa's provocative gaze and pose. In 1919, while painting dignitaries at the Paris Peace Conference, he met the arresting Marchesa Casati, whose extravagance and narcissism were legendary. He was to draw or paint her four times in the course of their thirty-five year friendship.
The Marchesa Casati by Augustus John (British) - Oil on canvas / 1919 - Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) #womeninart #art #oilpainting #portraitofawoman #womensart #ArtGalleryofOntario #AGO #BritishArtist #AugustusJohn #artwork #fineart #LuisaCasati #influencer #beauty #socialite #style #WelshArtist
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A little jewel inspired by Augustus John’s 1910 “Woman by a Riverbank” @verobeachmuseumofart French Moderns exhibit. #verobeachmuseumofart #augustusjohn #miniartist #miniartwork #upcycleart #masterstudy #smallartist #oilstudy #arthistorynerd
#painting #art
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Augustus John - "Thomas Hardy" (1923)
(portrait on loan from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge to Poole Museum, 2018)
#photo #photography #painting #portrait #augustusjohn #thomashardy #poolemuseum #dorset
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"Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals; but reason by man alone."
-- Pythagoras
#quotes #quotesoftheday #quoteoftheday #quote #LiteraturePosts #quote #book #books #voice #literary #art #poetrylovers #life #Pythagoras #mankind #AugustusJohn #passion #reason
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Black & white photo of a young man (Augustus John) hunkered down with arms crossed on a piece of stone on the ground, wearing a white shirt, a big hat and sandals, smoking a pipe.
Augustus John, BOTD 1878 (died 1961). Here he is in 1909, looking like every hippy guy wanted to look in 1967, dirty feet and all.
#Art #AugustusJohn
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🎨 #AugustusJohn, Welsh painter and illustrator, was #BOTD 4 January 1878. #Art #Painting #Illustration
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Fiore de Henriquez - "Augustus John" (1952)
(bronze cast of clay original; on loan from Tenby Museum & Art Gallery to Poole Museum in 2018)
#photo #photography #sculpture #bust #bronze #augustusjohn #fioredehenriquez #poolemuseum #dorset
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