By the autumn of 1930 Joyce's artistic reputation was secure, Ulysses had catapulted him into the first rank of world writers, and his ‘Work in Progress’, which would eventually become Finnegans Wake in 1939, had begun to appear – albeit to puzzlement – in an array of literary journals. The portrait painters had started to eye posterity – the most recent to seek a sitting with Joyce was Augustus John, one of the great artistic chroniclers of the Irish Literary Revival. Joyce, as keen to layer his painted image as he was his several books, had mischief in mind. Writing to Mrs Herbert Gorman in London shortly before the sitting was to begin, we see him thinking about his wardrobe: ‘Do you know a Scotch shop in London which sells plaid ties? If so I should like you to buy me one and send it. The plaid I prefer (I think it is the Murray) has a lot of red in it as a ground and of course blue and white and yellow all over it.’ The request, at first glance stressing a simple sartorial preference, had profounder intent, as Joyce made clear to Herbert Gorman a week later: ‘A.J. started my portrait a few days ago with that highly treasonable Stuart royal tie.’