Augustus John was one of the leading portrait painters of his generation. Born in southwest Wales, he studied locally and then in 1894 at the Slade School in London where he quickly established himself as a young artist of exceptional talent. Facile and fluid, his portrait paintings can be breathtaking in their bravura brushwork, but they can also be shallow depictions of the rich and famous. His drawings, however, are extraordinary in their quickness of execution and expressive economy of line, especially when, as here, he is depicting a loved one. Born in 1904, Robin was the third child of John and his wife Ida Nettleship (d. 1907), whom he married in 1901. However, by the time this work was executed, John had already embarked on an extended affair with Dorothy (Dorelia) McNeill with whom he had several children. A true Bohemian, John and his family as well as his mistress and her children occasionally traveled around the countryside in a caravan. This drawing, as is suggested by the boy's tunic, was probably done on one of those journeys.
