Creative Dorset - Augustus John

Augustus John bearing an uncanny resemblance to my father

My four years at art college was wasted on my old pot and pan... real artists wore sandals, shunned soap and lay in an absinthe haze, with a nubile nymphette in each arm. I, on the other hand kept both armpits and nose clean.  

The Bohemian lifestyle invented by the Impressionists was eagerly adopted by Augustus John, Britain's foremost portrait painter, after an encounter with a group of gypsy tinkers, a meeting which began a lifelong obsession with the gypsy lifestyle.  
It was in 1911 John first appeared in Dorset driving a gypsy caravan  and accompanied by an entourage of women, children and hangers-on. They were headed for Alderney Manor, a grandly named crenellated pink bungalow in 50 acres of heathland. 
John was already a celebrated artistic genius, though the less generous attributed this genius to a crack on the nut while at college. Either way, a genius he certainly was. 

T. E. Lawrence

Alderney soon became a mecca for the most notorious creative minds of the era. Visitors whose names read like a who's who, stayed in brightly painted gypsy caravans in the grounds; while the children ran wild through the heath and animals of all shapes and sizes wandered the grounds, even a token monkey made an appearance. 
The creative chaos was presided over by his wife Dorelia, dressed in flowing Pre Raphaelite robes.
It was not just a fertile period for his art, Augustus carried on hoovering up the women as well, even Ian Fleming's mother was counted as a mistress. In fact it almost became de rigeur  to claim to have fathered one of his many children. Some put the number at 100 though a more modest nine were acknowledged. It was said that he patted each child on the head when walking down the Kings Road in case one might be his own.

Thomas Hardy

He meanwhile produced a series of brilliant portraits including those of a couple of the local lights; T. E Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, who commented "I don't know if that's how I look, but that's how I feel," Controversially a portrait of Lord Leverhulme was returned headless because the soap millionaire didn't appreciate the likeness. This caused a global scandal with artists and models going on a one day strike in Paris...presumably refusing to starve in their garrets for twenty four hours.
Nothing lasts, though, and in 1927 the group upped sticks and moved across the border to Fordingbridge in Hampshire.
Alderney Manor, alas, is now no more, having been demolished years ago while Augusus crumbled away in 1961.

The Blue Poole near Wareham