Gwen John: A Painter's Life

Rating:
Summary: A Painter of Interiors
Review: Gwen John (1876-1939),the Welsh painter,is the sister of the more reknown Augustus John but with a style of art distinctly her own. Gwen John is a painter of interiors and reticience, who allows the subject's state of being, both physical and spiritual, to dominate the canvas. As her teacher Whistler knew and praised John's use of use of colour and especially tone became her trademark.
Ms. Roe has done an admirable job of combining the hidden life of this artist and the world of art in Paris from 1900-1939 in which she moved freely and with great competence. Ms. Roe has gone a long way in shattering the "Gwen John myth" of solitude and isolation and demonstrates that Ms. John continued to have and make friends and maintain her family ties until her death in 1939.
Ms. Roe writes of John's early days in Paris a a model and lover of Rodin. Her later associations with Rilke,the American collector and her patron John Quinn and his companion poet Jeanne Robert Foster,as she lived in Paris during the heady days of the great new developments in modern art. In the 1930s John retired to a Parisian suburb with her cats and her wild garden but continued her work. Even in her 50s she considered herself a student and studied under Lothe. She was reknown for her perfectionism and her inability to meet arbitrary deadlines because her own sense of what a painting should be, did not always meet the expectations of dealers and exhibitors. Her work was not commercial it was personal almost religious.
Gwen John is far less known than her contemporaries Chagall, Picasso, Roualt yet she knew she had a place in art and so pursued her vision fearlessly. She had little reknown in her own lifetime but time has proven her vision and her reputation in art is now secure.
I once met the art critic Sister Wendy Beckett at the Tate Museum, and she asked me whose works I had come to see. I told her Gwen John and Sister Wendy replied "Don't you just love her?." Gwen John,unique,ruthless,gentle,complex,gifted,restless and Celtic, Sue Roe shows us why those who admire Gwen John "just love her" and invites those who do not know her to do so.