Volume 23, Number 3 · March 4, 1976
How John Got On
By Douglas Cooper
Augustus John: A Biography
by Michael Holroyd
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 676 pp., $17.95
Time was—before 1914—when Augustus John was regarded as an exceptionally brilliant young painter by England's leading critics and connoisseurs. No one was thought to show as much 'promise' as an artist, his potentialities were said to be infinite, and it was widely proclaimed that John was a painter who, by his creative genius, would redeem the low artistic standing of the British School. George Moore, oblivious of Matisse and Picasso, claimed in 1906 that John was 'the only man living for whom drawing presents no difficulty whatever.' Then in 1909 Max Beerbohm wrote that he had 'no doubt of his genius,' while even the crusty Roger Fry did not hesitate to employ similar terms. Such high-flown language would get on any artist's nerves and drive him astray. And so it was with John, who had heard his exceptional gifts praised and discussed from the moment he entered the Slade School of Art in October 1894, at the age of sixteen, and began to accumulate certificates of proficiency, cash prizes, and scholarships.
Review, 5133 words
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