Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris

Gwen John, Woman Dressing, ca.1907, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

Gwen John’s work is both instantly recognisable and era-defining. She is known for the quiet strength of the solitary women in her portraits and the reflective stillness of her interiors. But for decades she was overshadowed by her famous brother Augustus and often portrayed as a recluse. This exhibition expels this myth and re-examines the significance of John’s work alongside her fellow international modernists.

Gwen John defied convention to forge her own, independent existence. She trained at the progressive Slade School of Fine Art, then one of the few art schools that were accepting women on the same terms as men. She chose to make her life and work within the heady art worlds of London and Paris amid a rich cultural circle that included James McNeill Whistler and her lover, Auguste Rodin. This is the story of a progressive trailblazer and of an artist, devoted to her craft and at the forefront of modern art in the early 20th century.