Dorelia in the Garden at Alderney Manor, Dorset

Augustus Edwin John, 1878–1961

ca. 1911

Oil on panel

Yale Center for British Art

A woman in a blue patterned dress and an orange skirt stands in a garden, leaning on a wooden pole. The background depicts rows of plants and a distant landscape. A woman in a blue patterned dress and an orange skirt stands in a garden, leaning on a wooden pole. The background depicts rows of plants and a distant landscape. Augustus John was heralded as a genius from his student days at the Slade School of Art, his draftsmanship celebrated as some of the finest since the Renaissance. Bohemian and extroverted, his reputation often outstripped his talent, and in later life his work was superseded by Continental modernism and obscured by his troubled personal life. This painting, however, was made at the height of his career and represents Dorothy “Dorelia” McNeill, his muse and mistress with wh