Augustus John & the Slade
“The Slade School of Art forms part of University College, London. The student was first introduced to the Antique Room, which is furnished with numerous casts of late Greek, Greco-Roman and Italian renaissance sculpture: no archaic Greek, no Oriental, no ‘Gothic’ examples were to be seen. The studio is used by both sexes. The student was to draw with a stick of charcoal, a sheet of ‘Michelet’ paper and a chunk of bread for rubbing out…After qualifying in the Antique, the student was promoted to the Life Room, where he drew and eventually painted from the living model.” Augustus John.
On his first day at the Slade, Augustus John was shown into the Antique Room which was the province of Henry Tonks, surgeon and artist. To those who objected that they wished to immediately join the Life Class, Tonk’s reproof was this: the students had to be taught about Greco-Roman sculpture before they could get to grips with the matter of real life. Like some Rhadamanthine judge presiding over the underworld, Tonk’s decision was final; but the young John raised no objection- he was just grateful to be exposed to this academic teaching at all. John was particularly taken with Tonks who had a fine line in sarcasm and upset many a student as in the case of C Nevinson who said in his autobiography Paint and Prejudice, Tonks had caused him to have a mental breakdown. During John’s second term at the Slade, two new teachers arrived: P.W.Steer and Walter Russell. Steer was a much admired painter, but by all accounts an atrocious teacher; Russell was a mediocre, traditional artist who had forged links between the Slade and the Royal Academy. Generally Augustus John thrived at the Slade: he won a certificate for figure drawing in his second year; he won a prize for advanced antique drawing, and a Slade scholarship of thirty-five pounds. And as Michael Holroyd says, the legend of Augustus John began after John had nearly split his head open diving into the sea. After this milestone John changed his appearance, attitude to life, and the way he rendered the world and the people in it. A “wildness” seized his character, and this was to shape his career and maybe even lead to its disappointing conclusion.
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