Gwen John: often dismissed as a timid recluse, this unique and uncompromising artist painted relentlessly on her own terms
The quiet Welsh painter Gwen John was not like any other artist, male or female – she was genuinely unique.
- The quiet Welsh painter Gwen John was not like any other artist, male or female – she was genuinely unique.
- She did not paint loud, macho work that took up a whole wall, nor sexy, objectified nudes, nor abstract forms, like many male modernists.
- She was fiercely herself, making small, intimate, idiosyncratic paintings that share a definite style and palette over the course of her career.
- They did not have the ascetic, saint-like drive John had to be an artist at all costs.
Romantic life of an artist
- Whistler’s teaching, which focused on establishing a full palette before beginning a painting, was something John carried with her all her life.
- She was, in many ways, living the romanticised life of a starving artist.
- John’s Catholicism in the second half of her life crystalised what was essentially a sacred calling for her to work as an artist.
- She was obsessed with recently canonised saints and strove to live her life in a saintlike way.
A quiet but powerful legacy
- This show resolutely makes the claim that John’s life is its own work of art, and engages with the nuances of a woman who eschewed the norms of both sexes to make her own way.
- It also made me fully recognise for the first time the real ruthlessness with which John lived her life.
- The recluse narrative she has been reduced to suggests that she was somehow held back in some way by shyness or poverty.