Gwen John
Gwen John was the second of four children. She studied at the Slade, the first art school in Britain to admit female students. She and her younger brother Augustus shared rooms. On her first trip to Paris she studied with Whistler at the Academie Carmen. On her return to London she had her first exhibition of work at the New English Art Club. In 1903 she returned to France with Dorelia Mcneil, the couple setting off to Rome on foot. At Toulouse they gave up and went to Paris. Here John modelled for Rodin. She modelled for a memorial statue to Whistler, although the commission was never completed. Gwen John painted possibly one of her most beautiful pictures here, 'A Corner of the Artist's Room in Paris'. Gwen John fell in love with Rodin, leaving Dorelia who was now being pursued by her brother Augustus. Gwen's love was too intense for Rodin and he broke off the relationship. 'Her passions for both men and women were outrageous and irrational. She was never "unnoticed" by those who had access to her', Augustus wrote of his sister. Gwen moved to Meudon, where Rodin had a house, here she led the life of a recluse painting the nuns in the nearby convent.
Her painting become a deafening silence. Sparse, with a muted palette, she loaded the paint with chalk making it stiff and less malleable, her marks more considered and less mutable.
In 1913, John Quinn an American patron, had her work shown at the seminal Armoury Show in New York.
She painted her last picture in 1933. In 1939 she wrote her will and then travelled to Dieppe where she collapsed and died.
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