Augustus John Rolf on Welsh Art

I'm on a wonderful Welsh adventure, as I discover more about

four outstanding artists influenced by this great land.

During the series, as a tribute to them,

I'll be creating drawings and paintings inspired by their art.

And I have to create in ways I've never done before.

And when it's all finished, I'll probably turn to you

and I'll say,

-"Can you tell what it is yet?"

-HE LAUGHS

It's a glorious Pembrokeshire day

and we've just arrived at the little seaside town of Tenby

on the trail of one of Wales's most respected and celebrated artists.

And his personal story is one of the most exciting and interesting in British art history.

It's full of fantastic creative passions,

wild Bohemian parties,

and some pretty intense personal shenanigans, as well.

It's the story of Augustus John.

In the 1930s, Augustus John was hailed as one of Britain's most talented artists.

The great and the good would pay handsomely

to be captured in oils by the old master.

It was once said of John, "He can draw like a god."

He was a towering archetype of the Bohemian artist -

wild and promiscuous.

It was said, "He was driven to draw the women he bedded

"and bed the women he drew."

My mission is to try and discover

why Augustus John's private indiscretions seem to have overshadowed

his rightful place in the art history books.

It's going to be a really challenging journey.

I'm going to have to unravel quite a few myths, cut through the bunkum,

and concentrate on which elements of John's flamboyant life

and his magnificent art I'm going to use in my tribute to the great man.

Wish me luck.

"You may travel the world over but you will find nothing more beautiful.

"It is so restful, so colourful and so unspoilt."

That's how Augustus John described his home town of Tenby.

It is certainly a jewel - a glorious, natural harbour

with medieval walls and stunning pastel-coloured Georgian terraces.

Born in 1878, Augustus John and his elder sister Gwen

grew up here in Victoria House, Victoria Street, Tenby.

Come to think of it, everything about their childhood

was totally Victorian.

Their mother Augusta was kind and caring,

and her fascination with art and drawing soon turned young Gwen and Augustus into budding artists.

Sadly, she died when the children were very young,

so they were brought up by their stern Victorian father, Edwin.

There's a saying in the art world

that great art always springs from unhappiness.

Well, with Gwen and Augustus John,

they had unhappiness by the bucket-load, growing up here.

Augustus once wrote that life was "gloom by day and horror by night".

But sadly, it was the tragic loss of a loving mother

and the influence of a cold father, a man they both hated,

that did most to shape their lives, their personalities,

their relationships and their art for the rest of their lives.

Desperate to escape, young budding artists, Gwen and Augustus,

would head off to Tenby's wonderful beaches

and ply their trade of selling sketches of tourists for a bob a go.

And that gave ME an idea - perhaps I could try plying mine as an entertainer.

MEN SING # Men of Harlech in the hollow

# Do ye hear like rushing billow... #

I met up with Tenby's wonderfully talented Male Voice Choir

who were collecting for a good cause,

and I thought I'd try them out on a rather less formal Men of Harlech.

# Romans came across the channel

# All dressed up in tin and flannel

# Half a pint of wode per man

# Oh, dress us more than these... #

APPLAUSE

That seems to have gone down better than I thought it would.

I must say, I love Tenby.

But sadly, and not surprisingly, given their painful childhood,

Augustus and his sister Gwen grew up to dislike their home town's charms.

Augustus now called it "smugly insignificant"

and couldn't wait to get out of the place and away from his dreaded father.

In 1894, Augustus deserted Tenby for the bright lights of London.

Only 16, he enrolled at the highly-respected Slade School of Art.

Augustus was shy and awkward and was described as a "methodical" student.

After a year, he'd failed to shine and was struggling to find his own individual style of painting.

In the summer of 1895, Augustus John's life was to change forever.

And remarkably, it was the Pembrokeshire coast right here

which was to have the most dramatic impact upon him - quite literally.

Augustus dived off Giltar Point head first...

..hit a rock,

and, as legend has it, he emerged "a bloody genius".

When he came back to the Slade in the autumn of that year,

he had transformed himself.

Gypsy hat at a rakish angle,

flamboyant silk scarf at the throat, single gold earring.

And sporting an arty beard. Quite right.

But the most important thing was that his painting had blossomed,

and the legend of Augustus John had begun.

Great Bohemian, great lover, great artist.

Actually, it was probably having to spend three months recuperating with his father

that finally kick-started young Augustus.

He rushed back to the Slade with a new fire in his belly,

sketching and painting like a man possessed.

By the fourth year, John had won the Slade Prize with his Moses And The Brazen Serpent.

It was hailed as a masterpiece, and people began to recognise

the birth of one of the world's greatest living artists.

Sister Gwen was also becoming known as a painter,

and it wasn't long before she joined her brother at the Slade.

Augustus had fallen love with student Ida Nettleship.

They were soon married and she gave birth to the first of their five children.

Augustus John had a remarkable appetite for women -

throughout his life he had numerous affairs.

But he was always searching for his ideal mistress

and he spun all his romantic fantasies around this one woman -

office typist, Dorothy McNeill.

He nicknamed her Dorelia.

Her classical features were all the rage at the time.

John was overwhelmed and consumed with desire for Dorelia,

and what started as a passionate affair soon became a life-long obsession.

Augustus John once said, "Woman is beauty.

"All artists love beauty, therefore all artists must love women".

Well, he certainly did that.

Poor Ida.

She either accepted Dorelia into the marriage or she lost Augustus.

In fact, she rather liked Dorelia, so they all moved in together.

Augustus would go on to father a total of seven children

with both Ida and Dorelia, and many more from his numerous affairs.

For late Victorian Britain, it was a scandal.

It's time for the Rolf-Mobile to hit the open road for another very important visit

before I start my tribute painting.

If I'm going to do the old master justice, I'm quite keen to see

some Augustus John masterpieces up close and personal.

The Tate Warehouse in London have agreed to unwrap a few Augustus John classic paintings

for myself and art historian Michael Holroyd to gloat over.

What a privilege.

Ah, I know that image.

That's the one.

This is Dorelia, painted in 1905-1906.

I had no idea it was that big.

Yes. It's remarkable when you think

that she was really a junior secretary,

and suddenly he brought her out of her class, gave her her new identity

and it became very fashionable to have that sort of clothing.

Women copied her.

What was she really like as a person, do you think?

-Well, you knew her, didn't you?

-I - I met her much later than this.

What she had was serenity.

If you had some terrible problem and you came to her,

you wouldn't get an intellectual answer, a solution,

but you would feel much better about it.

She had calm.

The story is that he overtook her in the street, looked back,

and never looked away again.

THEY LAUGH

What a good liar.

Oh boy, oh boy.

There it is, the legendary Lawrence.

I love the depth of that shadow there.

Makes you feel you know him, you know his...

-The thrust-forward bottom lip and the...

-Yes.

Anybody who thinks of Lawrence of Arabia, has this image in mind.

Why do you think it is that Augustus John

has disappeared from the history books, as it were?

I think it was felt that he was TOO famous

and he needed to be taken down a peg or two.

Also, that people felt that Gwen John was being overlooked.

It wasn't Augustus who did that,

but it was a fact that she was overlooked.

Posthumously, people have wanted to go more to HER pictures,

which have so much feeling in them,

and put her in his place of fame, really.

Well, my own view is they are not rivals.

You can find out about one by looking at the other.

I must say, it's a great shame to discover that the history books

don't truly represent the splendour of Augustus John's magnificent portraits.

Politicians, celebrities, anybody who was anybody

would pay handsomely to be captured in oils by the King of Bohemia.

Novelist Thomas Hardy, on seeing himself painted by John in 1923,

remarked, "I don't know if that's how I look but that's how I feel."

This great painting by Augustus John is of the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

They were a couple of characters, those two.

They were very similar in temperament -

moody, talented, passionate.

They both loved a pint or six, or seven.

And they both loved women, of course.

And it was a tussle over one particular woman that almost

proved to be their undoing.

At the time, Augustus John was painting

and bedding young Caitlin Macnamara.

Well, Thomas got off with Caitlin, didn't he? And Augustus was furious.

They had a drunken punch-up outside a Carmarthen pub

which left Thomas spread out cold in the gutter.

Dylan Thomas finally picked himself up, bruised and battered,

and they all met up here in the lovely grounds of Laugharne Castle in Carmarthenshire,

where the stage was set for a most extraordinary farce.

Here are two of Wales' greatest talents, both blind drunk,

arguing it out over a women.

Various eye witnesses told of how Augustus and Dylan

ran off around the castle on a theatrical brawl with a distraught Caitlin in hot pursuit.

Augustus John's biographer Michael Holroyd describes what happened next.

"Dylan turned up and the stage was set.

"No sooner had Dylan gone out by one of the three entrance doors

"than John would appear through another.

"A tremendous atmosphere of melodrama built up.

"Caitlin was on stage for most of the performance,

"but when the theatre demanded it, she would make a quick exit,

"while the two men made their entrances."

"The timing throughout was remarkable,

"and there were many rhetorical monologues in the high-flown style.

"To the spectators, wiping their eyes,

"the outcome appeared uncertain."

Well, Augustus won the fight, but Dylan won the fair maid.

Not long after, Caitlin and Dylan were married.

Strangely enough, Augustus John and Dylan Thomas remained firm lifelong friends.

What a pair.

I think I'm finally getting inside the mind of the great Augustus John.

And I don't think I can put off any longer my tribute painting.

I've made a few sketches, preliminary ideas,

I've got ideas running round and round in my mind,

but I think it's high time that I planted my easel

and committed some oil paint to some canvas.

And I don't mind telling you, I'm a bit nervous.

And I'll use that line for the eyebrows.

Lovely eyebrows going to be.

That's a better proportion, yes.

It's got to go about there somewhere.

I've got my canvas all set up in my studio,

which looks remarkably like my garden next to the river.

And we've got a wonderful model today, young Lauren.

And I've got to tell you,

you look so like Dorelia

that it's really quite unnerving.

Nice unnerving.

I've got a simple sort of a background here,

like a Welsh mountain background,

and to give me some assistance,

Lauren's going to read out some little words of wisdom and advice

from the great Augustus John himself on how best to paint a portrait.

I hope it helps me.

Off you go, Lauren.

"Make a puddle of paint on your palette

"consisting of the predominant colour of your model's face, ranging from dark to light."

I've sort of done that, yeah.

"Having sketched the features, be most careful of the proportions,

"apply a skin of paint from your preparation,

"only varying the mixture with enough red for the lips and cheeks

"and grey for the eyeballs."

-Have you done that?

-I haven't done that, no.

I'd better do some red for the lips. Yeah, keep going.

"If you stick to your puddle, assuming that it was correctly prepared,

"your portrait should be finished in an hour or so,

"and be ready for obliteration before the paint dries, when you start afresh."

I like it.

Get rid of your painting and start again.

Let me do a bit more. OK, thanks for that.

I'll just darken all that for the time being.

Well, I've taken on his advice about portrait painting

and I'm going to try and do Augustus John in a different style.

And to do that I'm going to have to concentrate on an artist

who has spent far too long in the shadow of the great Augustus John.

In fact, it's his sister, Gwen.

It was her life in France that was to have

the biggest impact on Gwen John and her art.

In Paris, she rubbed shoulders with the greatest French artists of her time.

Unlike her flamboyant brother's work, Gwen's art was muted

and more introverted.

Her paintings used simple brush strokes, subtle tones,

and pastel colours.

While her beloved brother Augustus continued his numerous affairs,

it was now Gwen and Dorelia's turn to fall in love.

They shacked up together in a Paris flat

and Gwen set to work painting several sensitive portraits of Dorelia,

which many believe are her finest works.

But Gwen's cosy relationship with Dorelia didn't last long -

Dorelia fled to Belgium with another man.

Letters flew between, Gwen, Augustus, Ida and Dorelia

and a saga unfolded that would rival any modern day soap opera.

When Dorelia left, all three of the Johns were distraught.

But it was Ida who was determined to get Dorelia back for her husband Augustus.

And she wrote to him, "I love you and what you want I want passionately.

"She," that's Dorelia, "She shall have pleasure with you.

"By God, I will haunt her until she comes back."

But it was actually Gwen that did all the pleading.

She wrote to Dorelia,

"You are necessary for Augustus's development and for Ida's.

-"Dorelia, you know

-I

-love you.

"It is the greatest crime to take anyone's happiness away," she pleaded.

They were all madly in love with Dorelia,

but it was Gwen's pleading that tipped the balance.

Eventually Dorelia came back to all three of them.

What a palaver.

Next on my journey, I'm headed to North Wales

and the spectacular Snowdonian mountains on the trail of

another important, but little known, Augustus John obsession.

This time, believe it or not, it wasn't a woman,

but the stunning Welsh mountains that John had fallen hopelessly in love with.

In particular, the twin peaks of Arenig Fawr.

Rough translation - the Great High Ground.

By 1911, Augustus John's portraits were legendary

but he just didn't do landscapes.

The greatest influence on John's new artistic direction

was fellow Welshman James Dickson Innes.

When Innes brought John to Arenig Fawr Augustus wrote:

"He was experiencing the scruples of a lover on introducing

"a friend to his best girl."

Augustus John and James Innes used to rent cottages similar to this - bit better repair of course -

right here in the shadow of Arenig Fawr.

Spectacular.

John and Innes would set out from here on their regular jaunts

looking for the ideal spot and the perfect lighting conditions

to capture the magnificence of Arenig.

And judging by the weather round here, speed was of the essence.

To learn a bit more about how Augustus John fared,

I met up with painter and art historian Keith Bowen.

You come and stand here.

-It's good.

-I've only been on it a couple of hours.

-You had some sunlight on there earlier, did you?

-Yeah, that's right.

I mean, now it's flat, but when you can pick up some drama,

you crash it in as quick as you can.

I guess the light changing all the time would be

a militating factor in how quickly you have to paint.

Well, that's it.

I think John had been in Provence,

painting in Provence where the light is fairly stable.

Here it's a different thing altogether.

These boys were painting spontaneously, wet in wet, job done.

And...

And Innes was almost using it as if it was water colour.

John was using it more opaquely.

You look at it, you can see the speed of how he would work at it.

How did Innes and John become so obsessed with painting

this one chunk of outcropping rock up here, this mountain?

John said he was never happier than when he was painting here.

John said of himself, "I feel full of work."

And John then said, about Innes,

"That mountain, Arenig Fawr, was his sacred mountain.

"And the midnight, the moorland that he'd walked off was his spiritual home."

-Wow.

-Very perceptive.

At the time Augustus John's landscapes of Arenig were snubbed

by the British establishment as "inartistic and talentless".

But when they were shown in New York in an exhibition in 1913,

they went down a storm.

I'm doing a tribute painting to Augustus John.

What must I have in that painting, in your opinion?

-Yes!

-That!

You've got to get it in. Look at this.

This was a painting that he was doing over the period that he was here.

And people said, "Oh, this is Provence."

Look at the background.

What's that there?

Those are the twin peaks of Arenig Fawr.

This has got to be part of what you're doing.

I'm not making it difficult, don't worry.

Augustus John's love of Arenig lasted over two years

before he abandoned landscape painting forever

and returned to portraits.

But many now consider John's Arenig Fawr paintings

and his time in North Wales as his finest hour.

I need to get those eyes looking absolutely fantastic.

That's better.

I think the first fence post can come in about there.

ROLF CHUCKLES

I hope you're already seeing the fact that that's

already starting to look like a ghostly image of Augustus John.

Yes, looking like the man.

Well, I think I've got the right feeling of the landscape

behind my portrait of Dorelia.

You can probably recognise the twin peaks

of that inspirational mountain Arenig Fawr

that Augustus John was so keen on painting.

Now, I've got the rough tones of light and dark

on Augustus John's ghostly face

and I'm going to try and in some way

get the pastel tones

and the tiny little vertical brushstrokes

that his sister Gwen used to do on her paintings.

I'm going to try and do that there

and see if I can... make that work.

I don't know. Wish me luck.

Gwen John spent the rest of her life in France

and died there in 1939.

Ida died young, aged 30,

after giving birth to their fifth child.

And Dorelia and Augustus brought up all seven children.

They stayed together for the rest of their lives.

But behind the legend, what was the real man like?

To answer that I need to find one of the last living descendents

that knew Augustus John best.

-Hi, Tristan.

-Hi, Hello.

In the wilds of Hampshire, I tracked down

Augustus John's illegitimate son Tristan De Vere Cole.

So tell me, what is your connection with the great Augustus John?

There are many stories attached to Augustus,

one of them being that whenever he walked down the King's Road, Chelsea,

he'd pat any passing child on the head in case it was his.

ROLF LAUGHS

Well, I'm supposedly the last of those bastards.

-So that's my connection.

-It's nice to meet you, sir.

You're shaking the hand of a proper bastard.

OK, OK. Show us around.

Oh, I'd love to show you around.

Tristan's mother Mavis first met Augustus in 1928.

A few years later, she modelled for him and they began an affair,

and it wasn't long before she gave birth to Tristan.

Today his house is a virtual shrine to his life growing up

with Augustus and the John family.

That's me by Augustus when I was eight.

Oh, gosh, aren't you like your mum?

Well, yes, I think so. More like my mum than Augustus.

What a fascinating childhood Tristan must have had.

I asked him what was it like growing up with Augustus and Dorelia?

I was lucky to be loved by both of them.

Everybody says, "Oh, gosh, it must have been very difficult with such a difficult man,

"you know, a very irregular childhood." I say, not at all.

We got on terribly well. He had his moods, mind you.

There were times when the black dog, he did get depressed, very much so.

-And you'd step very carefully around him.

-The whole household did.

And the cook, aptly named Mrs Cake, said to my mother,

she said, "Trouble with him is he's got too many brains

"and they've all gone to his head."

"Given another 100 years I'd become a very good painter,"

Augustus once said.

Many believe in later life he felt angry and unfulfilled.

He once muttered, "I wish I'd never left Wales."

Before his death, Augustus spent hours staring at Gwen's paintings.

And once said, "Fifty years from now I'll be known as the brother of Gwen John."

The King of Bohemia died in 1961 aged 83.

Well, there you go, my tribute to Augustus and Gwen John,

two of the most talented artists to come out of Wales.

You read all these steamy stories about outrageous goings on,

but maybe they were just searching for love and affection

from all the different people that they met along the way.

Who knows?

One thing is for sure -

they left us with a fantastic legacy of paintings.

I think all I've got to do now is sign it.

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