My indebtedness to the many people, galleries, libraries and museums that helped me to write my original biography of Augustus John is recorded in the first edition. In the preparation of this revised edition I have been further assisted by Nicola Beauman; John Beynon and Marion Hutton, Curator and Hon. Art Curator of Tenby Art Gallery; Jane Bond; Michael Bott, Keeper of Archives and Manuscripts at the University of Reading Library; Annette Bradshaw, Deputy Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Sally Brown and T. A. J. Burnett in the Department of Manuscripts and Manuscript Collections at the British Library; Mrs Robin Paisey and Alison Lloyd at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; David Carver, Archivist at the National Gallery, London; Charles Cholmondeley; Honor Clerk and Jonathan Franklin at the National Portrait Gallery, London; Caroline Cuthbert and David Fraser Jenkins at the Tate Gallery; Roy Davids, formerly at the London office of Sotheby’s; Mark Evans, Assistant Keeper (Fine Art) at the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff; Patrick Farndale; Jerome Farrell, City of Westminster Archivist; Susan Flint; Sir Angus Fraser; Cathy Henderson, Librarian at the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; Jane Hill; Sara S. Hodson and Mary L. Robertson, Curators of Manuscripts at the Huntington; Francesca John; Rebecca John, who gave me access to the papers of her father, the late Sir Caspar John; John Kelly, who gathered for me all references to Augustus John in the letters of W. B. Yeats; Erika Kruger, Registrar at the Johannesburg Art Gallery; Cecily Langdale at the Davis & Langdale Company, New York; Linda Lloyd Jones, Head of Exhibitions and Susanna Robson, Assistant Curator, Special Collections, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Assistant Archivist in the Department of Manuscripts and Records, the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; Edward Morris, Curator of Fine Art at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Hayden Proud, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Dr D. M. Pugh, who was for a time Augustus John’s doctor and also for a time my own; Gillian Raffles at the Mercury Gallery, London; Ian Rogerson, who let me see the text of his introduction to a forthcoming edition of John Sampson’s Welsh Gypsy Folk-Tales; Anthony Sampson, who showed me the typescript of his book on his grandfather, John Sampson; Richard Shone, Assistant Editor of the Burlington Magazine; Greg Spurgeon, Head of Documents and Storage and Cindy Campbell, Archivist, at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Mary Taubman; Daphne Todd, President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, London; S. R. Tomlinson, Assistant Librarian at the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Joan Winterkorn at Bernard Quaritch Ltd, London.
I would also like to record my gratitude to the late Vivien White, Augustus John’s daughter, who, as owner of the copyrights, renewed the permission first given to me by her mother, Dorelia John, to quote from Augustus John’s writings and reproduce his pictures.
I am grateful to Alison Samuel, my editor at Chatto & Windus, for passing her critical eye over the old and new portions of my text and helping me to harmonize them. I am also indebted to Toby Buchan for his valuable policing of my typescript. I have retained what Willa Cather called ‘the irregular and intimate quality of things made by the human hand’, and I owe much to Sarah Johnson for transferring my prehistoric manuscript on to post-modernist disks.
Finally I must pay tribute to my wife, who propped me up and pulled me through when I fell ill, enabling me to complete this book.
MICHAEL HOLROYD
Porlock Weir, September 1995