A giant Salvador Dali painting of the patron saint of Spain soaring through the sky on a white horse is the showpiece of a new exhibition at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler.
The four-metre tall painting Santiago El Grande is one of 75 “masterworks” on display from the Beaverbrook Gallery in New Brunswick, including paintings by art legends like John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough and Joseph Mallord William Turner.
But to Michael Audain, the museum’s founder, the most intriguing painting is an Augustus John portrait of a beautiful young woman — Audain’s mother, Madeline Stulik.
Madeline Stulik by Welsh painter Augustus John.
“Augustus John was the most infamous (British) portrait painter of the early 20th century,” relates Audain. “He associated mainly with gypsies and had a rather eclectic household where everyone lived together quite happily.”
John’s eclectic household included several wives, mistresses and children — he may have fathered up to 100.
Somehow he had the energy to dash off portraits of luminaries such as Dylan Thomas, Lawrence of Arabia, William Butler Yeats, Tallulah Bankhead, Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw.
Many of his subjects were from London’s Bohemian set and hung out at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in Soho.
“It was run by a restaurateur called Rudolph Stulik,” said Audain. “He established it about 1910 after he made a packet in the late (19th century). He (had) catered the officer’s mess when Kitchener was going up the Nile to put down the Mahdi (Islamic leader in Sudan).”
Stulik’s daughter Madeline was a model and in 1927 John painted her portrait, which hung in the restaurant.
A few years later, she had a whirlwind romance with a young Canadian named James Audain.
“I think 10 days after she met my father, she nursed him over a hangover, and they applied to get married,” said Audain. “I think they had to wait a couple of more weeks, but it was a very fast wedding. Stulik greatly approved. He thought my father was a Canadian millionaire.”
James Audain was the great-grandson of Robert Dunsmuir, a coal baron who was the richest man in B.C. in the 19th century. But the family fortune was largely gone by the 1930s — and the marriage between James and Madeline didn’t last, either.
The union produced a son, Michael, on July 31, 1937. Michael wound up moving to Canada with his father, while his mother remarried and moved to South America.
“I didn’t know my mother very well. I left her when I was four years old and only saw her periodically in my life, more towards the end of her life,” Audain said. “(But) I remember she told me several times the story about being painted by Augustus John.”
Unfortunately, the painting was sold when the Eiffel Tower restaurant went out of business in 1937, and its whereabouts was unknown.
Audain would make his own fortune with Polygon, one of B.C.’s biggest builders. He also became one of Canada’s top art collectors and philanthropists and, from time to time, would try to track down the portrait of his mother.
Michael Audain with the portrait of his mother that he tried for years to track down.
“I tried British museums and that sort of thing,” said Audain, who will turn 79 at the end of the month. “(Finally) this chap who’s head of conservation at the National Gallery of Canada located it in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where it’s in the Beaverbrook Collection.”
The painting had been purchased for £10 by Canadian financier Sir James Dunn. Dunn was a friend of Lord Beaverbrook — they were both from New Brunswick and made their fortune in Britain.
After Dunn died, his wife married Beaverbrook. Several paintings from the Dunn collection wound up in the Beaverbrook collection, including the giant Dali painting Santiago El Grande and the portrait of Madeline Stulik.
“When I heard where it was I was very intrigued. I thought I’d have to make a trip to Fredericton,” said Audain.
“Then to my surprise, our (curator) Darrin Martens, with no prompting from me, came up with the idea of getting the Beaverbrook collection because it’s on the road right now.”
A few weeks ago, Audain saw the Augustus John portrait of his mother for the first time.
“It’s all been rather remarkable,” said Audain. “I only have a few faded snapshots of my mother and I was delighted to see this.”
