A girl's head - E

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.

Printmaking marked a definitive point of divergence in his and Gwen's careers; it was also where Augustus John's true brilliance lay. Comparatively little has been made of his graphic work, perhaps because it seemed so much less important to himself. Yet in etching, he achieved a level of expression to match the Old Masters. What they lack in colour and expansive size, in the impatient gestural slashes of paint that typify his oils, they make up for with exquisite emotional confession.

This small but vivid portrait etching of an unknown young woman shows her in a contemplative pose, looking slightly sidelong at the viewer. It was made in 1914 but published in an edition of 50 in 1919: World War 1 had intervened. Its title 'E' indicates that it was part of the series of eight such works that goes up to 'H' (Te Papa 1979-0003-130); our collection also includes another related etching gifted by Sir John Ilott, 'F', also known as The woollen hat.

See:

Goldmark Art, 'Profile |'Augustus John: Gypsy Idylls and Masterly Etchings', https://discover.goldmarkart.com/augustus-john/

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

Dr Mark Stocker   Curator, Historical International Art    May 2018