Augustus John
Artist and Painter
Augustus Edwin John was born on 4 January 1878 in Tenby, Pembrokeshire — the third of four children of Edwin William John, a Welsh solicitor, and his wife Augusta. His older sister was the painter Gwen John. Their mother died when Augustus was just six, but not before she had instilled a love of drawing in both children. At seventeen he briefly attended Tenby School of Art before leaving Wales for London in 1894 to study at the Slade School of Art, where he quickly became the star pupil of drawing master Henry Tonks.
In the summer of 1897 Augustus dived into the sea at Tenby and struck submerged rocks, suffering a serious head injury. The long convalescence that followed seems to have transformed him — he returned to the Slade as a different, bolder, more adventurous personality, and in 1898 won the Slade Prize for his composition Moses and the Brazen Serpent. Before his graduation he was already being spoken of as the most gifted draughtsman of his generation.
He married Ida Nettleship in 1901 and took a post teaching art at the University of Liverpool, where he learned Romany from the university librarian John Sampson and developed a deep fascination with gypsy culture. He and his family subsequently spent long periods travelling Wales and England in gypsy caravans — an itinerant life that fed much of his pre-war work. His mistress Dorothy McNeill, whom he nicknamed Dorelia, became his lifelong companion and most important model after Ida died in 1907.
