Ida

Ida John (née Nettleship) was born in 1877, the eldest daughter of the painter Jack Nettleship and his wife, Ada (née Hinton), the accomplished dressmaker whose family are today noted for their achievements in mathematics and science (Geoff Hinton, the godfather of Artificial Intelligence is a direct descendent). Ida was drawn to art and attended the Slade from 1892 to 1898. In this rare early oil portrait, a true likeness of Ida’s beauty, she is wearing a dazzling yellow blouse and black veil over her hair, and appears to be showing off her wedding ring which dates the portrait to soon after her marriage to Augustus in January 1901, when she was 24. The portrait was kept at the home of Augustus’s father Edwin John in Tenby, Pembrokeshire until his death in 1938 and has not been seen in public since 1962.

The story of her short life - she died in 1907 aged 30 - has been well documented by Michael Holroyd in his biography of Augustus John (1996) and in many other biographies, but it is by reading her letters that we get closest to Ida. These letters were published in 2017 under the title The Good Bohemian (Bloomsbury) and reveal her to be witty, compassionate, full of warmth and love, and a woman ahead of her times in her understanding of the complexities of her marriage. Although she suffered doubt and depression and was at times overwhelmed by her four young sons (she died after giving birth to her fifth), her natural intelligence and courage never left her. Her second son Caspar John, who was to become Admiral of the Fleet, once wrote to his elder brother David, ‘We would doubtless all have been better men had she lived on.'

We are very grateful to Rebecca John for preparing this catalogue entry.