Augustus John

From his early training in French plein-air painting methods, Augustus John developed a preference for working with models out of doors, rather than from sketches in the studio. In 1901 John began to explore what became a lifetime preoccupation with gypsy culture and language. During frequent excursions to Romany camps in the Welsh countryside between 1901 and 1914, he produced many boldly colored renditions of gypsies, influenced by the work of the Welsh primitive painter James Dickson Innes. This panel portrays Lily, a family friend of John's, in the mountains of northern Wales, near Ffestiniog, a slate-mining area, now part of a large national park.