Volume 44, Number 4 · March 6, 1997
The Blasted Oak Tree
By Rosemary Dinnage
Augustus John: The New Biography
by Michael Holroyd
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 715 pp., $40.00
Themes and Variations: The Drawings of Augustus John 1901-1931
with essays by Michael Holroyd, by Mark Evans, by Rebecca John
National Museums and Galleries of Wales/Lund Humphries/Spink, 71 pp., $29.95
Portraits of Women: Gwen John & Her Forgotten Contemporaries
by Alison Thomas
Polity Press/Blackwell, 259 pp., $32.95 (paper)
Augustus John's artistic reputation has undergone as dramatic a change as any in British art history. Dubbed by The Times, in 1917, 'the most famous of living English painters' and declared by another critic to be one of the three greatest talents in Europe (the other two being Matisse and Epstein), he has sunk to the point where the 1987 exhibition 'British Art in the 20th Century,' twenty-six years after his death, included no Johns at all. Some famous portraits, such as that of Madame Suggia, the violinist, are familiar to visitors to London's Tate Gallery, and the National Museum of Wales (John's homeland) has some paintings on display. But a recent exhibition of his drawings, to the catalog of which Michael Holroyd contributes an introduction, excited only moderate interest and, when works in the hands of family and private owners are excluded, much of this prolific artist's work lies stacked away in gallery reserves.
Review, 5448 words
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