Portrait of Vivien Leigh

This fine portrait of Vivien Leigh by Augustus John was commissioned by her husband, Laurence Olivier in 1942. She was then playing in a long run of The Doctor’s Dilemma, her first foray into George Bernard Shaw, while Laurence Olivier was serving in the Fleet Air Arm. Since the stage door of the Haymarket Theatre was very close to the National Gallery, she saw a lot of the gallery’s Director, Kenneth Clark. This could well have been an impetus to the commissioning of this portrait.

In May 1943 three sketches of Vivien by Augustus John were shown at a joint exhibition of John’s drawings alongside paintings and drawings by Gilbert Spencer at the Leicester Galleries in Leicester Square. The opening was dubbed ‘surely the most colourful private view of this war’, while The Times critic judged Augustus John ‘our greatest living draughtsman’ adding: ‘His force, freedom, and variety are unequalled today, and he has a remarkable gift of suggesting in a few lines and washes, not only movement and solidity but also the romantic world in which the people of his imagination live.’ (The Times, London, 1943).

Following Vivien Leigh’s divorce from Laurence Olivier in 1961 she moved to Tickerage Mill, a house in Sussex. She took the portrait by Augustus John with her, and it remained there until her death in 1967.

We are very grateful to Hugo Vickers, author of Vivien Leigh: A Biography, (1988), for preparing this catalogue entry.