Augustus John OM 1875-1961
A Canadian Soldier, 1917.
Study for the monumental work; “Soldiers Opposite Lens”, exhibited at the Canadian War Memorial Exhibition, 1919.
Pencil on paper, 13.5 x 10.25 inches. Exhibited at the King Street Galleries, "The Great War Exhibition" 1988, Catalogue number 89.Accompanied by the letter of authentication from his son, Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Caspar John GCB. During WWI Augustus John was attached to the Canadian forces as a war artist and made a number of memorable portraits of Canadian infantrymen. The end result was to have been a huge mural commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook and the sketches and cartoon for this suggest that it might have become his greatest large-scale work. However, like so many of his monumental conceptions, it was never completed.The study is related to an element of the Canadian War Memorial exhibited work held in the National Museum of Canada, Ottowa.By the 1920s John was Britain's leading portrait painter. John painted many distinguished contemporaries, including T E Lawrence, Thomas hardy, W B Yeats, Lady Gregory, Tallulah Bankhead, G B Shaw, Marchesa Casati, Elizabeth Bibesco. His most well known portrait is that of Dylan Thomas, his fellow Welshman. He became a leader of the New English Art Club, where he chiefly exhibited. 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of portraiture and his ability to catch unerringly some striking and usually unfamiliar aspect of his subject, he superseded Sargent as England's fashionable portrait painter.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 awarded the Order of Merit by King 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.
