The Armistice and the Aftermath by John Fairley

Author:John Fairley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781526721198
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2019-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

Lawrence of Arabia, Augustus John.

Prince Feisal I, Augustus John.

Lawrence, with Seven Pillars of Wisdom still to be published, was taken up by the American journalist Lowell Thomas and turned into one of the first true international celebrities of the twentieth century, before joining the RAF as an anonymous airman and dying in a motorcycle crash.

Augustus John had the good fortune to meet a London friend in Paris, José Gandarillas, who let him have a studio adjoining his apartment on the Avenue Montaigne. Every night the apartment was thronged, and a band played music on the landing. ‘Le tout Paris était là’, as John put it.

Although John painted the Australian Prime Minister Hughes, the Belgian delegate Hymans and the Maharajah of Bikaner, ‘a superb specimen of Indian manhood’, and arranged to paint the South African General Botha ‘who unfortunately suddenly died’, his main artistic endeavours during the conference seem to have been focused on the ladies.

The former British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith’s daughter Elizabeth was induced to pose – ‘This brilliant young woman used to beguile the tedium of sitting by composing poetry which from time to time she recited aloud.’ He was never short of female subjects. At a ‘thé dansant’ on the Champs Élysée given by the Duchess of Gramont, ‘a new arrival arrested my attention. Even the Duchess, whose natural beauty was unassailable, looked, by comparison, somewhat rustic.’ This turned out to be the Marchesa Casati, the wife of an Italian delegate, and ‘it wasn’t long before I added her to my list of sitters.’

The distaff side of the Peace Conference continued to prevail in his portraits: ‘If the Duchess of Gramont failed me, there was always Miska, her friendly Scandinavian maid; if Louisa Casati was engaged, Louise Lorraine would perhaps be free.’

Towards the end of the war, John had, in fact, seen something of the battle zones. In uniform and with the rank of major although, as he reminded his correspondents, retaining his beard and thus the distinction of being the only such hirsute figure in the Army other than the King, he toured around behind the lines in Flanders in a chauffeur-driven car and painted a number of soldiers and wartime scenes.

But when the Allied attacks were being planned in the summer of 1918, John found his car and driver commandeered. He therefore returned to London and started work on the ‘cartoon’ intended for the Toronto War Memorial.

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