LION AMONG THE LIONS

LONDON'S Royal Academy, like most academies, tends toward the safe, the sure and the mediocre. Yet it boasts one member of genius in brash, bush-bearded old Augustus John. Last week the academy opened a dazzling retrospective of John's lifework, including some 230 portraits. The display amply documented the fact that John, at 76, still upholds a vigorous and perceptive tradition of portraiture.

John remembers that in his student days he was "enslaved" by one of the few Americans who ever captured London: James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Actually, his work recalls another American artist whose successes in England were even greater than Whistler's: John Singer Sargent. John learned from both and came to paint personalities just as brilliantly, charmingly, and revealingly as his masters had. Delineating the mind-heavy brow of G. B. Shaw (opposite), John's brush is icicle-sharp. Gliding across the bosom of the Marchesa Casati (overleaf), it turns feather-soft. He naturally places his technique at the service of his subject matter, and this instinct, which most modern painters scorn, is the first essential of portraiture.

The profession suits John's heart as well as it does his talent. He seems to regard the world as a magnificent house party, rich in gypsies, intellectuals, artists, celebrities and, above all, aristocrats. But John is no mere lion hunter at the party; he is a legendary lion himself, able to play every role from stuffy country gentleman to rollicking bohemian in gold earrings. "The line of lawyers from which I spring weakened apparently by repetition, seems to have exhausted itself," he once explained, "and in a final spasm brought forth a kind of recidivist, throwback or survival of an imaginary golden and lawless age . . . But there is no need for alarm: the monster is amenable and responds to kindness."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.