Fonds GB 0210 MSTRISTDEVERE - Tristan de Vere Cole (Augustus John) manuscripts

Augustus Edwin John, artist, was born at Tenby, Pembrokeshire, on 4 January 1878. He studied at the Slade School in London between 1894 and 1899. A diving accident in 1897 caused severe head injuries, reputedly affecting his personality and painting style. He married Ida Nettleship in 1901 and they had five children. At about the same time, he was appointed to teach art at the University of Liverpool, where he was taught the Romani language. Periods of travelling throughout England and Wales in a gypsy caravan inspired much of his work before World War 1. In 1902, he met Dorothy MacNeill, giving her the Romani name Dorelia. She became his most important model and lifelong inspiration; she moved to Paris with Augustus's sister, the artist Gwen John, the following year. Augustus based himself mainly in Paris in 1906-1907. After Ida's death in 1907, Dorelia became John's partner (they never formally married). They had four children together, both before and after Ida's death. His early period of work was characterised by drawings from life, notably of contemporaries including Ida and Dorelia and his sisters, as well as portraits in oils influenced by the Old Masters and an experimental series of etchings. He was elected President of the National Portrait Gallery in 1914. During World War 1 he spent a brief time in France, employed by the Canadian government as a war artist, and was official artist at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. After a period of painting landscapes and employing a more modern impressionistic idiom, he became increasingly successful as a portrait painter. His subjects included Thomas Hardy, T. E. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, and David Lloyd George. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1928, resigned in 1938, and was re-elected in 1940. He was elected President of the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art in 1934 and President of the Gypsy Lore Society in 1938. In 1942 he was awarded the Order of Merit for services to art. He died at Fryern Court, Hampshire, his home since 1927, in 1961.

Mavis Wright (1908-1970) first met the artist Augustus John in 1928. She married his friend Horace de Vere Cole (1881-1936) in 1931 but continued to model for John and became his mistress. On 16 March 1935 she gave birth to Tristan de Vere Cole, who was most likely John's son. In 1939 Mavis married the archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler (1890-1976), divorcing in 1943. In July 1954 she was arrested, having apparently shot and seriously wounded her then lover Tony Vivian, 5th Baron Vivian. She served a six-month prison sentence for unlawful and malicious wounding. She died on 14 October 1970.

Tristan de Vere Cole was born on 16 March 1935, the son of Mavis de Vere Cole (1908-1970) and, most likely, Augustus John. He was brought up partly by his mother and partly by Augustus and Dorelia McNeill at their home Fryern Court. After attending boarding school Tristan served in the Navy, 1951-1960, and later became a drama director for the BBC. He married Diana Crosby Cook in 1962.

Augustus Edwin John (1878-1961), artist, was born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, and became a leading British portrait painter. In 1901 he married Ida Nettleship (1877-1907) and they had five children, the last being Henry John (1907-1935). In 1902 he met Dorothy (Dorelia or Dodo) McNeill (1881-1969) who became his mistress and, following Ida's death, his common-law wife. They had a further four children, including Romilly (1906-1986) and Poppet (1912-1997), and settled at Alderney Manor, Dorset, and from 1927 at Fryern Court, Fordingbridge, Hampshire. Augustus died there on 31 October 1961 and Dorelia on 24 July 1969.