George Bernard Shaw
Augustus Edwin John, RA (Tenby 1878 – Fordingbridge, Hampshire 1961)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1915
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
400 x 603 mm (23 3/4 x 15 3/4 in)
Place of origin
Ireland
Order this imageCollection
Shaw's Corner, Hertfordshire
NT 1275285
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) by Augustus John RA (Tenby 1878 – Fordingbridge, Hampshire 1961), 1915.
Full description
Shaw first met Augustus John at the Carfax Gallery, London, where Shaw was a shareholder. The Carfax Gallery staged several exhibitions of Augustus John’s work between 1901 and 1907. The portrait was painted in 1915 when John and Shaw were guests of Lady Gregory in Ireland. John later noted in his autobiography that the portrait was 'painted at Lady Gregory’s house, Coole Park, Co. Galway.' (John 1952, p.97).Shaw’s letters to the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell tell the story of the sitting, and how John came to paint a 'subject picture entitled Shaw Listening to Somebody Else Talking, because I went to sleep while I was sitting, and John, fascinated by the network of wrinkles made by my shut eyes, painted them before I woke, and turned a most heroic portrait into a very splendidly painted sarcasm.' (Shaw to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, 15 May 1915, in Dent 1952, p.175). Here Shaw is referring to the version of the painting known as The Sleeping Philosopher owing to the fact that it represented Shaw with his eyes closed. The work was purchased by Queen Elizabeth in 1938, and is now in the Royal Collection. For an image of this portrait see Shaw’s photographic collection NT 1715212.35 and Weintraub 1979, p.62. Shaw also repeated aspects of this story to Frances Chesterton (wife of author G.K. Chesterton): 'Lady Gregory insisted that Augustus John should paint a portrait of me. John exported himself for that purpose, but fell among convivial spirits and was lost on the way for a whole week. He arrived in a contrite and somewhat shattered condition on Sunday, and has since painted and obliterated no less than three masterpieces. Like Penelope, he gets up early and undoes the work of the day before.' (Shaw to Frances Chesterton, 5 May 1915, in Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, vol.III, pp. 294-95). In his letter to Mrs Patrick Campbell, Shaw similarly explained how some versions of the portrait survived, whilst others disappeared: 'Augustus John painted six magnificent portraits of me in 8 days. Unfortunately, as he kept painting them on top of one another until our protests became overwhelming, only three portraits have survived…' (Dent 1952, p.175). Owing to Shaw’s desire to create a photographic record of John at work, one of the three 'lost' portraits can be seen in a photograph taken by Shaw during the sittings. Shaw’s photograph of John in the act of painting was one of the images he later selected for publication in The Countryman in 1937 (The Countryman, 15, 1, April-June 1937, 97; see NT 1715223.109). Of the three final versions of the portrait, Shaw purchased two, which he kept in the London flats, later donating one of these to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in 1922. (Fitzwilliam Museum inv.no. 1071; Weintraub 1979, p.62). When Sydney Cockerell came to Adelphi Terrace to collect the painting on 25 March 1922 he was accompanied by T.E. Lawrence. Thus the occasion was especially significant given that it was also the first meeting of the Shaws with Lawrence, who became close to the Shaws, particularly to his wife Charlotte. John wrote to Shaw: 'I note that you are keeping the best – with the blue background.' This portrait now at Shaw’s Corner remained in the Shaws’ London flats until 1945 when it was brought by Shaw to Ayot for staging the property. Shaw had asked his secretary Blanche Patch to bring the painting up to Ayot ready for the time when the house would be open to the public after his death. He explained this was part of his 'policy of leaving all my works of art of any interest either in Ayot for the National Trust or to some public gallery'. Around this time Shaw presented further artefacts to the main London museums, including two drawings by Augustus John of T.E. Lawrence, which had belonged to Charlotte. Shaw donated these original drawings to the National Portrait Gallery in 1944: a print after one of the drawings can be found in the drawing-room at Shaw’s Corner (NT 1274660).Shaw admired the portrait, declaring that it 'projected all Shaw’s public strength and assurance at their fullest intensity' (Sixteen Self Sketches, 1949). However he felt that it had failed to capture his true self in the way the Rodin bust had (NT 1274943). In a remark to his biographer Archibald Henderson, Shaw described the work as 'the portrait of my great reputation' (Shaw quoted in Henderson, 789). Both Shaw and Charlotte disliked the way it made him look older than he actually was: at the time of the sitting in 1915 Shaw wrote to Frances Chesterton 'my vanity rebels against being immortalized as an elderly caricature of myself.' In 1931 Charlotte wrote to their friend the civil servant Thomas Jones: 'John’s G.B.S. is getting to be a portrait! When it was first painted it was preposterous; but I saw G.B.S. looking exactly like it yesterday – alas!' (Charlotte Shaw to Thomas Jones, 2 January 1931, in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters, 1931-1950, p.1). Many years later Shaw deliberately posed for a photographic portrait sitting beneath the John painting, and captioned the image: 'Portrait of G.B.S. by Augustus John with the aged original' (Bernard Shaw Through the Camera, 65; see NT 1715221.19).Labels on the frame (verso) show that the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1954, the Corporation Art Gallery, Bradford, and the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition (dates unknown).Alice McEwan 2020
Provenance
The Shaw Collection; the house and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust by George Bernard Shaw in 1950, together with Shaw's photographic archive.
Credit line
Shaw’s Corner, The George Bernard Shaw Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: Bernard Shaw /by /Augustus John
Makers and roles
Augustus Edwin John, RA (Tenby 1878 – Fordingbridge, Hampshire 1961), artist
References
Bernard Shaw through the camera : 1948., p.65 Shaw, Bernard, Sixteen self sketches /, 1949 Dent 1952: Alan Dent (ed.), Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Patrick Campbell: Their Correspondence. London 1952 John 1952: Augustus John, Chiaroscuro: Fragments of Autobiography, New York, 1952 Henderson 1956: Archibald Henderson, George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century, New York 1956 Weintraub 1979: Stanley Weintraub, ‘In the Picture Galleries’, in Michael Holroyd (ed.), The Genius of Shaw, London 1979, pp. 43-63.
