Augustus John [antikvár]

AUGUSTUS JOHN There is a pronounced strain in English painting, as common in this century as it was in the last, of artists who begin very well and end very badly. Of course this is not peculiar to England, but as it has had relatively few outstanding artists who have matured well, the brilliant beginners with their dismal endings tend to be thrown into relief. There are a number of causes for this unhappy corrosion, and in Augustus John we can see the effects of most of them. John had magnificent beginnings - an ingratiating draughtsmanship allied to a flamboyant painting style - and he chose subjects which were both personal and widely compelling. But as the years passed, his work did little to justify a reputation which stood very high until the Second World War. Long before that, most painters in England regarded his talent as spent; young artists can be severely ungenerous in their critical appraisal, and to many John was an endearing social figure rather than an active aesthetic influence. The force of his personality ensured that where he drank or whom he painted was news; how he painted became virtually irrelevant. He was the most famous modern English painter with any claim to distinction. Nearly twenty years after his death, his position as a splendid failure arouses interest, although, as his inclusion in the present series of books bears out, his work is still popular. Augustus John was immensely successful as a young man; his drawings were collected when he was still a student, he was given important commissions, and in John Quinn he found a wealthy American patron. But early success for painters can sometimes have a devastating effect. It invites them to take the line of least resistance, and social victories become confused with those won in the studio. Thomas Lawrence was Painter in Ordinary to George III at the age of twenty-two and deterioration gradually set in. We can follow David Wilkie and John Everett Millais from resounding early accomplishment to dim decline, and the same is true to a lesser degree of Edwin Landseer and Alfred Munnings. British painting is strewn with the fly-blown corpses of once gifted men. But early success is not wholly responsible for this pattern. John himself was aware of the pitfalls involved and never succumbed. Many of the best painters in England have been predominantly lyrical in their expression, interpreting the English landscape through poetic or visionary eyes. Palmer springs immediately to mind, but we should forget neither Hilliard's youth among wild roses nor the anxious romanticism of several young artists in the 1940s. This lyrical mode belongs essentially to youth (as so often in poetry) and it is rare, though perfectly possible, for the artist to effect a successful transformation as he grows older. Alien to this lyrical expression are rigorous self-criticism, strong intellectual powers of construction, and that ambitious thinking-through of pictures which is noticeable in French and Italian painting. England has not had great decorators or muralists, and few artists in the last hundred years have been convincing on a large scale. Stanley Spencer is an exception among those working in John's lifetime.