IRVING PENN (1917-2009)

Augustus John, 1958

Details

IRVING PENN (1917-2009)
Augustus John, 1958
platinum-palladium print, printed 1976
signed, initialed, titled, dated, numbered '6/35', 'P 236', inscribed 'For Pat, Merry Christmas' in pencil and Penn/Condé Nast copyright credit reproduction limitation and edition stamps (on the verso)
19 1/8 x 19in. (48.9 x 48.5cm.)

Literature

Penn, Moments Preserved, Simon and Schuster, 1960, p. 69; Penn, Passage: A Work Record, Alfred A. Knopf Callaway, 1991, p. 127; Westerbeck, ed., Irving Penn: A Career in Photography, Art Institute of Chicago Little, Brown and Co., 1997, fig. 11, p. 172, contact sheet

Further Details

Irving Penn notes in the caption to this image in Moments Preserved : 'Augustus John addressed the camera with a portrait painter's sense of image.' (p. 69)

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Lot Essay

Born in Tenby, England in 1878, Augustus John studied at the Slade School in London (1894-99). A fiery individualist, he was described by his friend, the painter Wyndham Lewis, as 'a great man of action in whose hands the fairies had placed a paintbrush instead of a sword'.

By the 1920s, John was Britain's leading portrait painter.

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