Augustus John | Pittore Post-impressionista

Augustus John (4 gennaio 1878 - 13 ottobre 1961) è stato un pittore ed incisore Britannico.

Augustus John nacque a Tenby, nel Galles. Studiò all'accademia di Liverpool ed alla scuola d'arte di Londra con Ford Madox Brown; già allora si mise in luce grazie al suo talento, come sua sorella Gwen John, all'epoca artista molto nota.

Le prime opere della sua carriera artistica furono delle incisioni dal disegno vigoroso, ispirate a Rembrandt.

La maggior parte dei lavori successivi furono invece ritratti, caratterizzati da notevole vivacità e da una profondissima analisi psicologica, tanto che all'inizio alcuni non furono apprezzati; ciononostante, in breve tempo furono proprio i ritratti a fargli raggiungere la celebrità.

Amava ritrarre sia i membri della sua famiglia che alcuni dei personaggi più noti della Belle époque. I ritratti della sua famiglia raffiguravano le sue mogli e i suoi molti figli; il numero esatto dei figli è incerto, pare che ne nacquero molti al di fuori del matrimonio da relazioni con amanti occasionali.

John dipinse molti contemporanei celebri, tra cui Thomas Hardy, Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, la marchesa Luisa Casati, James Joyce, ed anche Elisabetta II; secondo molti critici il suo ritratto migliore è quello del poeta gallese Dylan Thomas.

Durante la prima guerra mondiale, si unì alle forze canadesi come artista di guerra e fece numerosi ritratti di soldati di fanteria.

Dopo la guerra il suo stile divenne sempre più ruvido e la sua vena artistica sembrò inaridirsi; fu probabilmente per cercare nuova ispirazione e nuovi stimoli che viaggiò molto, soprattutto in Spagna e nei Caraibi.

Anche se non riuscì più a raggiungere i picchi artistici di un tempo, la sua fama era ormai consolidata, tanto che nel 1921 fu nominato membro della Royal Academy of Arts.

Continuò a lavorare fino alla morte, avvenuta a Fordingbridge, nell'Hampshire, il 13 ottobre 1961.

Augustus Edwin John OM RA (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sargent and Charles Wellington Furse "was over. The age of Augustus John was dawning".

He was the younger brother of the painter Gwen John.

Born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, John was the younger son and third of four children.

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, University College London.

He became the star pupil of drawing teacher Henry Tonks and even before his graduation he was considered the most talented draughtsman of his generation.

His sister, Gwen was with him at the Slade and became an important artist in her own right.

In 1897, John hit submerged rocks diving into the sea at Tenby, suffering a serious head injury; the lengthy convalescence that followed seems to have 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 Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

The need to support Ida Nettleship (1877–1907), whom he married in 1901, led him to accept a post teaching art at the University of Liverpool.

Honours and Reputation

Early in his career John became a leading figure in the New English Art Club, where he frequently exhibited in the years up to the First World War.

With his vivid manner of portraiture and his ability to catch unerringly some striking and usually unfamiliar aspect of his subject, he superseded Sargent as England's fashionable portrait painter.

In 1921 he was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy and elected a full R.A. in 1928.

He was named to the Order of Merit by George VI in 1942.

He was a trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1933-1941, and President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters from 1948-1953.

He was awarded the Freedom of the Town of Tenby on 30 October 1959.

On his death in 1961 an obituary in The New York Times observed, "He was regarded as the grand old man of British painting, and as one of the greatest in British history". | Source: © Wikipedia