Lot Essay
Edie McNeill joined Augustus John and her sister Dorelia after Ida had died in 1907. She helped with the children and took charge of the kitchen at Alderney Manor. Michael Holroyd (Augustus John The New Biography, London, 1996, pp.366-67) describes her as 'Small, with black-brown hair and large brooding eyes, their upper lids curiously straight giving them a strange rectangular shape. Her mouth was rather prominent, curving downwards, and her expression sardonic yet vulnerable - an index of her life to come'.
She later married John's friend Francis Macnamara. (see R. John, National Museum and Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, Cardiff, 1996, p.42).
She later married John's friend Francis Macnamara. (see R. John, National Museum and Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, Cardiff, 1996, p.42).