Gwen John

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Self-Portrait , 1902, Tate Gallery, London
Girl with Bare Shoulders (Fenella Lovell) , around 1910
The Convalescent , 1923/24, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Gwendolen Mary John , called Gwen John (born June 22, 1876 in Haverfordwest , † September 18, 1939 in Dieppe ) was a Welsh painter.

life and work

Gwen John was the older sister of the painter Augustus John . In 1895 she studied for three years at the London Slade School of Art , followed by four months of painting studies at James McNeill Whistler's Académie Carmen in Paris. In 1899 she returned to London , but from 1904 she finally settled in France. Gwen was among others the sculptor Auguste Rodin in Paris model , resulting in a love relationship developed. From 1911 she lived in Meudon , a suburb of Paris. In 1913 she converted to the Catholic faith, which inspired her: "My religion and my art, these are my life" ("My religion and my art determine my life").

Her work mainly includes portraits of young women, including nuns. During her lifetime she only had an exhibition at the New Chenil Galleries in London in 1936 and achieved little fame until the end of her life. Her brother Augustus John had predicted that one day she would be recognized as the better painter of both. Several books about her have been published and exhibitions have been held since the 1960s. Her works are in the collections of such prestigious museums as the Tate Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York .

Literature (selection)

  • Alicia Foster: Gwen John . Princeton University Press, Princeton 1999, ISBN 0-691-02944-X
  • Cecily Langdale, David F. Jenkins: Gwen John: an interior life . Rizzoli, New York 1986, ISBN 0-8478-0681-2
  • Alexandra Lavizzari: Gwen John. Rodin's little muse , novel. Zytglogge Verlag, Bern 2001, ISBN 978-3-7296-0620-3
  • Marie Christine Jádi, Helene Schjerfbeck and Gwen John. The expression of emotions in modern painting . Reimer, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-496-01572-7

Web links

Commons : Gwen John  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jan Chilvers: Gwen John in A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Art , 1999, accessed September 12, 2012
personal data
SURNAME John, Gwen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES John, Gwendolen Mary (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Welsh painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Haverfordwest
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 1939
Place of death Dieppe