Gwen John

Gwen John was born in Haverfordwest in 1876. She grew up in Tenby and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, where her younger brother Augustus also trained. In 1904 she settled in France.

In Paris she supported herself partly by modelling, including for Auguste Rodin, who became her lover. Her own paintings developed a different kind of intensity: figures sit quietly in restrained interiors, their presence built through closely related colours and carefully balanced forms.

John later lived in Meudon and entered the Catholic Church in 1913. Religious life provided subjects, routines and companionship, including the nuns who appear in her work. Her attachment to Véra Oumançoff, the sister-in-law of the philosopher Jacques Maritain, brought together spiritual friendship and romantic feeling. Surviving draft letters suggest that her love was not returned in the same way.

John’s life was more connected than the image of a wholly isolated painter suggests. Her work was exhibited in Paris, London and New York, though recognition remained limited beside her brother’s fame. She died in Dieppe in 1939, aged 63. Later exhibitions have brought her achievement more fully into view.