Augustus Edwin John, RA (1878-1961) [Aw177]
FISHERGIRL OF EQUIHEN, 1907
Pencil on grey paper; signed lower right: John (H. 30 cm, W. 25 cm)
With deft strokes, Augustus John has captured the fire and beauty of an anonymous Breton fisher-girl. She turns away from her from us, her head profiled over her left shoulder, hands to one side, aware of – but not acknowledging – our presence. In this work, confidence of the subject meets confidence of draughtsmanship; this is a virtuoso drawing from an artist whom his Slade tutor Henry Tonks described, in uncharacteristically flattering prose, as ‘the best draughtsman since Michelangelo’.
John would paint no fewer than eleven drawings of this particular fisher-girl. Though his background was conventional (the son of a Welsh solicitor), Augustus John would all his life play the role of the rebel: he enjoyed travelling in a gypsy caravan with his wife Ida and mistress (later second wife) Dorothy in a ménage à trois before Ida’s death in March 1907 of puerperal fever after giving birth to her fifth son; later that year, Augustus John spent the summer at Equihen near Boulogne, where he made numerous studies of fisher-folk who ‘with their distinctive costumes made admirable models’.
There is a commercial note to the drawing. With a young family of dependent children, John was short of cash when he came across Equihen. Writing to Dorothy he declared: ‘I must get a studio or shed here soon and paint ‘em – there’s money in it!’.
Exhibited: National Gallery, London, British Painting since Whistler, 1940, no. 8; Arts Council Touring Exhibition, Augustus John, 1948–1949; Royal Academy, London, Augustus John, 1954, no. 246; National Museum of Wales, Augustus John, Studies for Compositions, 1978, no. 63; National Museum of Wales (later at Spink & Sons, London and Royal Cambrian Academy, Conwy), Themes and Variations: the drawings of Augustus John, 1996, no.37.
Literature: Lillian Browse, Augustus John: Drawings (London, 1941), p. 19; Michael Holroyd, Mark Evans and Rebecca John, Themes and Variations: the drawings of Augustus John (London, 1996), p. 48.
Provenance: Gift of Harry Collison, 1940.