Visiting Welsh Museums for the first time since returning to Wales from the USA. I had been working in my studio painting angels (a commission) when I visited the National Museum Cardiff and saw Augustus John’s masterpiece; the oil painting of poet Dylan Thomas.
The painting exploded at me in a burst of red, white and blue. Dylan Thomas wearing a bandana in front of the colours of the Texas flag.
I had only just moved from Texas and saw for the first time the pouty, angelic, face of the young Dylan Thomas. Michaelangelo’s “Bacchus”: god of wine, creativity, sexual freedom and theatre.
Augustus John had painted his subject with alabaster/luncheon meat, pale skin, ethereal red/brown curls, chin tucked in, forehead forward, looking away through large tan, brown eyes. A fast, confident capture, almost impressionistic. A Welsh red, mesmerising portrayal of the young poet.
“Look at me Dylan.”
In the essay “REMEMBERING DYLAN THOMAS” Nerys Williams, New Dublin Press 2020 writes… “As a teenager, the painter Augustus John violently sexually assaulted Caitlin and claimed her as a lover. John curiously introduced Caitlin to Dylan in a pub.”
(Early portrait painters felt entitled to use the bodies of their sitters and Caitlin sat for Augustus John on many occasions. Three oil paintings and many sketches show Augustus John’s interest in Caitlin MacNamara in 1930 when she was 16/17 years of age).
Augustus John introduced Caitlin MacNamara to Dylan Thomas in April 1936 as they all met up frequently while visiting Caitlin’s mother who lived near Augustus John in Fryern Court, Hampshire. It was during these visits that Augustus John painted two portraits of Dylan Thomas 1936-1937. Dylan and Caitlin married in 1937.
This is a very early portrait of the poet, painted when Dylan Thomas was just twenty-three and at the height of his creativity.
Augustus John and Dylan Thomas’s friendship faded. John did not care for “Under Milk Wood”, he wrote “…the whole hotch potch is a humourless travesty of popular life and is served in a bowl of cold cawl in which large gobbets of false sentiment are embedded. Pouah!”
JOHN, Augustus, Dylan Thomas © Estate of Augustus John. All rights reserved 2025 - Bridgeman Images.
National Portrait Gallery Collection
I check Augustus John’s portrait of Dylan Thomas in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Sad eyes, beige and browns. Speckled fisherman’s sweater with a large hand-knitted boatneck sitting in front of what appears to be a battered metal backdrop. Still not looking at me.
“Look at me.”
“I’ll paint you Dylan”
Surrounded by crow black, Dylan Thomas looking up at the moon, leaving Brown’s Hotel and heading back to Caitlin at the Boathouse. Painted in the same style as Augustus John’s two portraits.
This oil on board was exhibited at the “Under Milk Wood” Exhibition at the Torch Theatre, Milford Haven and Tenby Museum (where curious lythe red Dylan Thomas was exhibited).
I went mad painting this portrait of Dylan Thomas. Sectioned for six months, I drew him playing cards at a kitchen table, very detailed, especially the eyes. It immediately sold, but I wish I owned it now, or at least had it photographed. “Love In The Asylum”.
I watched a very overweight man gorge himself to death in there. I offered to carry out CPR, the orderly, to me, wasn’t doing it properly. “No thank.”
I took Dylan with me on that journey. “On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.”
Since then I paint and draw Dylan looking at me.
STUART, Lynn, Under Milk Wood © Lynn Stuart
Under Milk Wood, young Dylan Thomas, the colourful houses of Fishguard Harbour reflected in the water as a background. Daffodil heads after the petals have dropped off. Lascivious leaves licking the side of Dylan’s face. A tree turning into a woman with a poppy leaf arm. Wild bluebells, gone to seed as small purple/blue garlics and clematis reaching for him. He wears the bandana from Augustus John’s portrait. Softly, gently depicted in coloured pencil.
STUART, Lynn, Return Journey © Lynn Stuart
“Return Journey” is a wartime BBC radio broadcast about the Swansea Blitz. I portray Dylan in pencil, sitting opposite a row of standing houses that howl out the words from the broadcast.
“It was a cold white day on High Street, and there was nothing to stop the wind slicing up from the docks, for where the squat and tall shops had shielded the town from the sea, lay their blitzed, flat graves, marbled with snow, and headstoned with fences….”
Dylan with piercing eyes, wool sweater, wool cardigan, bandana and cigarette, staring and daring you not to feel.
…And feel is what I did when I encountered “Dylan Thomas”, Augustus John’s almost Impressionistic depiction of the young poet. Wild orange/red curls, bisque complexion, looking wide eyed to the right in what I believe is the best portrait of the poet.
Augustus John, you captured Dylan Thomas… and Dylan Thomas captured you.
Lynn Stuart is an artist who has worked in oil paints since College (Dyfed College of Art, and Maine College of Art, USA). While living in America, Lynn exhibited at the Dallas Centre for Contemporary Art many times and was included in the Texas National Exhibition juried by Sandy Skoglund. Since returning to the UK, Lynn has exhibited at MOMA, Wales, the Torch Theatre Gallery and Kings Street Gallery, Carmarthen.
This work was commissioned as a collaboration between CELF and Disability Arts Cymru.
