John Austen

John Austen (1886-1948), from Art Nouveau to Art Deco

John Archibald Austen (1886-1948) was born in Dover in Kent. His father was a carpenter and his initial training was carpentry as well but he soon showed interest in art, especially after seeing the work of Aubrey Beardsley. He moved to London where he started taking drawing lessons and participating in different dramatic projects. He got a regular job at Penny Illustrated Paper and exhibited at the Royal Society of British Artists, where he soon became associated and later member. Illustrations for his second book (Hamlet) already brought him huge success. After that, he never ran out of work.

Apart from drawing and illustrating he also taught at the Art School at later years. He was good friends with two other successful contemporaries: Alan Odle and Harry Clarke, which style resembles his (and vice versa) in many ways. The three of them often exhibited together and Odle's wife wrote a book about Austen (published in 1930). When Austen wrote a manual about drawing (The ABC of Pen and Ink Rendering), he used Odle's work, etc.

Here are a few more facts about his life and work:

• Austen's wife Ruby Thomson was his muse and main inspiration. Her features are recognizable in numerous female characters in his drawings and illustrations.
• Books he illustrated belong to wide variety of genres and target groups: from Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors to Flaubert's Madame Bovary, from Perrault's Tales of Passed Times to Aristophanes' Frogs, from Defoe's Moll Flanders to Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
• Austen significantly changed his style during his career. At first he belonged to Art Nouveau, after 1925 switched to Art Deco, which was heavily influenced by Greek pottery but always tried to include different techniques and styles to fit the illustrated text with most appropriate pictures and design. This is very likely correlated with another area of his work - advertising and poster making.