“I think Jamaica would be a nice place to go and work.” wrote Augustus John in 1911. However it was not until late in 1937 that he realised this ambition. His journey by boat took almost three weeks. Tourism in the Caribbean and Jamaica in the 1930s was not the major industry that it is today. John painted this picture soon after his arrival. He stayed first in an hotel a few miles outside Kingston called The Mona Great-House. In his autobiography, 'Chiaroscuro' published in 1952, John refers to “…the prim black servants…I got some of them to sit for me.” It seems safe therefore to assume that the two young women in this picture were hotel workers.
John wrote with great sympathy and enthusiasm about the Jamaican people and landscape. In a letter to a friend he said “nobody believes I'm serious when I tell them I am only interested in painting the coloured people.” In his autobiography he wrote, “the superior race with few exceptions takes little interest in the population of the Island except as affording an inexhaustible supply of cheap labour. The blacks…are at the mercy, for the most part of the United Fruit Company, a benevolent tyranny with its roots in the USA.”
John's visit to Jamaica coincided with the first stirrings of a serious revolt by Jamaican workers against their poor wages and conditions. In May and June of 1938 there were strikes and demonstrations throughout the Island. During these 8 people were killed, 171 wounded and 700 arrested and prosecuted. These events resulted in the rapid growth of trade unions and the foundation of the Peoples National Party. It was the beginning of a political process that would lead to independence; the 40th anniversary of which we are celebrating this year. Augustus John was made aware of the root causes of the revolt when he met with a group of political activists who mistook him for a visiting Member of Parliament. They told him that wages were as low as 4p per day and that the people suffered generally from wide spread unemployment, malnutrition and disease. He wrote, “in my idle day dreams I imagined myself heading an uprising of the Island, driving the whites, the good governor and all, including a number of my new friends into the sea and inaugurating a reign of Harmony in this potential Paradise.”
John returned to England early in 1938. 'The Two Jamaican Girls' was purchased from an exhibition of his work held in May and June in London. The show was a great success, almost all the pictures were sold. The Walker paid £450 for the painting and it remains one of the most popular pictures in the gallery.
Augustus John was born in Tenby in South Wales in 1878, one of four children. His sister Gwen also became an artist. John showed an early talent for drawing. At 16 he enrolled at the Slade School in London where there was a special emphasis on draughtsmanship. John was a star student and received several prizes during his four years of study. However, success as an artist was far from sudden. In 1901 he came to Liverpool to teach at the University School of Art for three days per week. He was by this time married and he needed the £300 salary to support his wife and child.
By the summer of 1902, tired of his teaching responsibilities he returned to London. There he built a reputation as a controversial but fashionable young painter. John was a larger than life figure and a tireless self- publicist. Six feet tall with a Christ-like beard, large earrings, long hair and a big black hat, he cultivated an image of the great artist, lover and bohemian. Throughout his life he travelled constantly in search of inspiration for his work. He was also fascinated by the Romany language and way of life. For several months went on the road with his wife and children in a Gypsy caravan.
In spite of his carefully cultivated image as an outsider and all-round rebel, John was seldom without a steady supply of wealthy and influential patrons. During the First World War he was rejected as unfit for service but volunteered to work for the Canadian War Memorials Fund in 1917, with a rank of major. He produced numerous sketches and studies and began a 40-foot canvas 'The Pageant of War', which was never completed. He was forced to return from France in March 1918 to avoid a court-martial after striking a fellow officer.
In the 1920s he continued to travel, paint and prosper. He painted his many children and mistresses as well as aristocrats and celebrities. In 1928 he became a member of the Royal Academy, the rebel had surrendered to the art establishment. John excelled at portraits done in two or three hours, a brilliant likeness quickly drawn with brushes and colour. As early as 1902 he had written, “I fancy portraits should be painted in an hour or two. The brush cannot linger over shabby and ephemeral garments.”
The pictures that he painted in Jamaica have been described as the best work produced in the last 25 years of his life. This painting of two young Jamaican women is a perfect example of his portraiture. The colour though thickly applied remains bright, not muddy. John paints in an Impressionist manner. The Impressionists excelled in describing light and atmosphere. In this picture John succeeds in capturing perfectly the emotional atmosphere. The young woman at the front appears bored in her new subservient role as an artist's model. Her companion seems apprehensive, as many young women were in the presence of Augustus John, or 'disgusting John' as he was once known. Perhaps their troubled expressions simply reflect the turbulence of the time that they are living through.
Further information about this picture and other paintings that include black people can be found in the booklet 'The Black Presence' that is available in the gallery shop or via mail order, price £2.95.
