Portrait of The Rt. Hon. W.F. Massey

Augustus Edwin John (1878-1961), the brother of the Welsh painter Gwen John, trained at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1894 to 1898, where he won numerous prizes and awards. He became a member of the New English Art Club in 1903, and was Professor of Painting at the University of Liverpool from 1901 to 1904. He travelled throughout Europe (his first visit was to Paris in 1900) and he was a regular visitor to the USA. Before World War, I John lived as a traveller with his family, in caravans in England and Wales. During the war, he was attached to the Canadian forces as a war artist. John was made a member of the Royal Academy in 1928; he resigned in 1938; but he was re-appointed in 1940. He was a president of the Society of Mural Painters. He was a member of the Camden Town Group in 1911 and a member of the London Group from 1940 to 1961. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1942.

John quickly earned a reputation as one of England's foremost painters. His earliest works combine the poetic sentiment of the Pre-Raphaelites with a broadly Impressionist technique. Numerous works illustrate aspects of Roman life, to which John was introduced by his friend John Sampson, University Librarian at Liverpool. His mural paintings showed remarkable talent, but his work in this area was curtailed by his numerous portrait commissions - by turns intimate or grand and sumptuous in character, and often strikingly composed - undertaken to support his large family and notoriously bohemian lifestyle.

This is John's sole oil painting currently in Te Papa's collection. It portrays New Zealand politician William Ferguson Massey (1856-1925), and was made in the course of one of the latter's five extended visits to Britain between 1916 and 1924. Massey's massive physical frame is not played down by John; the portrait is a vivid likeness of a far from handsome man, but is detached - if only precariously - from any hint of cariacture. Yet it is not surprising that both then and now art critics mostly prefer John's portraits of women; and so did he.

Massey is depicted in typical attire of the time favoured by older men of his status, wearing a winged collar and tie. As prime minister of New Zealand from 1912 till his death in 1925, Massey's long tenure in office, often without a parliamentary majority and for over four years as war leader (1914-18), is a testament to his astuteness and tenacity. In his Te Ara biography, Barry Gustafson concludes: 'although Massey espoused the cause of conservatism, both his personal instincts and his practice while in office place him in a tradition of humanitarian pragmatism'.

See:

Barry Gustafson, 'Massey, William Ferguson', https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2m39/massey-william-ferguson

Piano Nobile, 'Augustus John, Biography', https://www.piano-nobile.com/artists/97-augustus-john/biography/

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    November 2018