Ida Margaret Nettleship (24 January 1877 – 14 March 1907) was an English artist who is best known as the first wife of artist
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...
.
Biography
Nettleship was born in
Hampstead, the eldest of the three daughters of animal painter
John Trivett Nettleship
John Trivett Nettleship (11 February 1841 – 31 August
1902) was an English artist, known as a painter of animals and in particular lions. He was also an author and book illustrator.
Life
He was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire on 11 Februa ...
and his wife Adaline, better known as
Ada Nettleship, dressmaker and daughter of
otologist
Otology is a branch of medicine which studies normal and pathological anatomy and physiology of the ear (hearing and vestibular sensory systems and related structures and functions) as well as their diseases, diagnosis and treatment. Otologic ...
James Hinton.
[
At the age of 15, she became a student at the ]Slade School of Art
The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...
, where she studied until 1898 under Fred Brown, Henry Tonks
Henry Tonks, FRCS (9 April 1862 – 8 January 1937) was a British surgeon and later draughtsman and painter of figure subjects, chiefly interiors, and a caricaturist. He became an influential art teacher.
He was one of the first British arti ...
, and Wilson Steer. Among her fellow students, she befriended Gwen Salmond, Edna Waugh, Gwen John
Gwendolen Mary John (22 June 1876 – 18 September 1939) was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. Her paintings, mainly portraits of anonymous female sitters, are rendered in a range of closely related tones. Although s ...
, and Bessie and Dorothy Salaman. She became engaged to their brother Clement Salaman but broke it off in 1897 and traveled to Italy.[ She followed up with a trip to Paris in 1898, where she shared a flat with Gwen John and Gwen Salmond and studied under ]James Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...
at the Académie Carmen
Académie Carmen, also known as Whistler's School, was a short-lived Parisian art school founded by James McNeill Whistler. It operated from 1898 to 1901.
History
The school opened in October 1898 in a large house and stable at No. 6 Passage St ...
.[
Towards the end of her time at the Slade, she met Gwen's brother ]Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarge ...
,[ and they married on 24 January 1901.][ They honeymooned in Swanage and initially took a flat in Fitzroy Street, London, but John was soon appointed a temporary professor at the school of art at University College, Liverpool. They remained in Liverpool for 18 months, and it was there that the first of their five sons, David Anthony Nettleship, was born in January 1902. He later became a musician and postman. A portrait of Ida by John from around 1901, while she was in her first pregnancy, is held by the ]National Museum of Wales
National may refer to:
Common uses
* Nation or country
** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen
Places in the United States
* National, Maryland, c ...
.
The family moved to London in 1903, where John co-founded Chelsea Art School with William Orpen
Major Sir William Newenham Montague Orpen, (27 November 1878 – 29 September 1931) was an Irish artist who worked mainly in London. Orpen was a fine draughtsman and a popular, commercially successful painter of portraits for the well-to-do in ...
. Their second son Caspar John
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Caspar John (22 March 1903 – 11 July 1984) was a senior Royal Navy officer who served as First Sea Lord from 1960 to 1963. He was a pioneer in the Fleet Air Arm and fought in the Second World War in a cruiser taking ...
was born in London in March 1903; he became an officer in the Royal Navy, eventually rising to post of First Sea Lord.
Later in 1903, Nettleship's life with John was complicated when Dorelia McNeill became John's model and mistress.[ From 1903 to 1907, the three lived together in a ]ménage à trois
A () is a domestic arrangement and committed relationship with three people in polyamorous romantic or sexual relations with each other, and often dwelling together; typically a traditional marriage between a man and woman along with anothe ...
, first at Matching Green
Matching Green is a village and the largest settlement in the civil parish of Matching, in Essex, England. It is east of Harlow, north-west of Chipping Ongar and south-east of Sawbridgeworth.
Matching Green has one of the largest village gr ...
in Essex and from 1905 in Paris.[ Nettleship had three further sons with John in quick succession: Robin (born 1904 in Essex), who became a linguist; Edwin (born 1905 in Paris), who became a boxer and watercolourist; and Henry (born 1907 in Paris), who became a religious philosopher. During this period, Dorelia also had children with John, in 1905 and 1906.
Given John's limited income and the growing family, Nettleship eventually gave up painting to take care of the children and the housework.][ Although she found this wearisome and considered leaving John, she did not live long enough to do so.][ She died of puerperal fever in Paris in 1907 after the birth of her fifth son, Henry.][ Her mother arranged her cremation at the ]Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery (french: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise ; formerly , "East Cemetery") is the largest cemetery in Paris, France (). With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figure ...
and took her ashes and three eldest children back to London with her.
John remained with Dorelia after Nettleship's death, and they brought up Nettleship's children. Despite the fact that Nettleship was John's wife, housekeeper, and the mother of five of his children, there is not a single mention of Nettleship in ''Chiaroscuro'', John's 1952 memoir.[
''The Good Bohemian'', an edition of Nettleship's letters, was published in 2017; it was edited by John's granddaughter Rebecca John and John's biographer Michael Holroyd.][
]
References
Further reading
* Michael Holroyd, ‘John, Augustus Edwin (1878–1961)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 200
accessed 6 June 2014
(Requires subscription)
* J. S. Cotton, ‘Nettleship, John Trivett (1841–1902)’, rev. Mark Pottle, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 201
accessed 6 June 2014
(Requires subscription)
External links
Portrait of Ida Nettleship by Augustus John
c.1901, National Museum of Wales
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nettleship, Ida
1877 births
1907 deaths
19th-century English women artists
Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art
Artists from London
Académie Carmen alumni
Deaths in childbirth
Hinton family
John family
People from Hampstead