By: JOHN, Augustus Edwin (1878-1961)

Acq. Number: 21

Dimensions: 32.4 x 28.0 cm

Artwork_Medium: Pencil

Purchased: 1942

Buyer: WALDEN, Lord Howard de

Location: Glynn Vivian Art Gallery

Town: Swansea

Notes: Born in Tenby, between 1894 and 1898 John studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, and by the time he completed his studies he had acquired a reputation as an outstanding draughtsman. Although influenced by the work of Old Master painters, particularly Rubens, John took a modern approach to landscape painting, with a bright palette and loose brushwork. He was renowned as a bohemian personality who adopted anindividualistic lifestyle and was attracted to gypsy culture and the Romany language, traveling with gypsy caravans over Wales, Ireland, and Dorset; he based numerous works on these experiences. John also painted portraits of politicians, society personalities and literary figures including James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, and poets Dylan Thomas and William Butler Yeats.He was elected a Royal Academician in 1928, awarded the Order of Merit in 1942, served as a Trustee of the Tate Gallery from 1933 to 1941, and was President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters from 1948 until 1953. The sitter of this acquisition, Edith Lees known as Lyndra, was the wife of Australian artist Derwent Lees, whom she married in 1913 and who was a close friend of John. Lyndra sat for him in a series of drawings in 1910; see National Museums and Galleries of Wales Themes and Variations-The Drawings of Augustus John 1996 pp.60-61.