Augustus John - Mannerist Nude (Vivien with a Flute) |
c1935-40 oil and charcoal on canvas.
Viven was Augustus Johns daughter.
Prov: A John Studio Sale Christie's 20.7.62 number 162.
The subject of this oil painting is Vivien John (1915-1994) the younger daughter of the artist Augustus John and his wife Dorelia. Vivien was never sent to school and seems to have spent an idyllic and bohemian childhood running barefoot around the countryside, riding ponies and spending time with gypsies. She became an artist and was allowed by her father to attend the Slade School upon the somewhat perverse condition that she received no instruction!
Michael Holroyd in his acclaimed biography of Augustus John commented, his greatest portraits are not generally of the great ... from commissioned portraits, with all their rules of vanity and forced politeness, he turned with relief back to the ranks of his family. However for Viven it was sometimes an ordeal as she was first portrayed at the age of two-and-a-half and, again quoting Holroyd, tears were stemmed with lumps of sugar : and the painting went remorselessly on. At all times John insisted upon absolute immobility, the slightest movement of the head or body being corrected with the point of a brush used like a conductor’s baton. Nevertheless she continued to be regularly painted by her father and although Mannerist Nude is not dated it can safely be ascribed to the 1930s given her birth date in 1915. |
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