Augustus John, R.A.

Private Collection, U.S.A.

Acquired by the present owner in 2025

The present work, Portrait of Dorelia by Augustus John, is an exquisite example of John’s skill as a draughtsman and a superb likeness of Dorelia, his lover and muse. Dorothy McNeill - known simply as Dorelia - appears in countless paintings and drawings by John, and is instantly recognisable. 

John first met Dorothy in the winter of 1902-3. As David Fraser Jenkins writes, ‘It is not clear which attachment came first, but [Dorothy]…remembered noticing Augustus at the private view of an exhibition, and desiring him, as if it was her destiny’ (David Fraser Jenkins and Chris Stephens (eds), Gwen John and Augustus John, Tate Publishing, London, 2004, p.17). John was already married to Ida (née Nettleship, a fellow artist whom he had met at the Slade) but in 1904, Dorelia moved into John’s household forming a very modern ménage à trois with Ida and became the subject of many of his most successful drawings. She had a captivating hold over him and he returned again and again to capture her likeness, which is so unusual and recognisable with her wide-set eyes, heart-shaped face and often dramatic sweep of hair.

The present drawing is particularly unusual in that it shows Dorelia pregnant. Dated to circa 1905-6, this is when she would have been expecting either her firstborn child Pyramus, who was born in May or June that year, or 1906, when her second child Romilly was born in the summer of that year. 

Dorelia is pictured here as full of the promise of new life. Not only representing a new type of life with John, in this unusual romantic and domestic relationship, but also the promise of new life in the form of the child she is carrying. Looking straight at the viewer with her characteristically magnetic and captivating gaze, she smiles entrancingly as though with a secret known to only her. Her hand is placed on her belly,  which emphasises the swell of her stomach, and in the other hand she carries a single cut flower, another reference to new life. 

John’s best work are undoubtedly his drawings which are known to capture the freshness and instant inspiration of the moment. Here, with the fast, loose strokes of her clothing and the carefully detailed and entrancing features of her face, we see John at his very best.