Gwen John: Paris Salon Favourite

When she was alive, Gwen John was a big name in the art world, a really big name. As we learn at the start of Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, her pictures were so admired in France in the 1920s that "everyone knows of Miss John.... and the Salon takes all she will send them." 

But after her death at the start of World War II, John gained a reputation as something of a recluse, an artist who'd worked in isolation, and she was outshone by her flamboyant brother Augustus. This show in Chichester restores Gwen to her rightful position in art history, placing her squarely among a group of groundbreaking turn-of-the-century artists including Edouard Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard and her lover Auguste Rodin, for whom she posed.  

This is a captivating exhibition. John's paintings -- largely portraits and interiors -- are not loud or showy; they're incredibly restrained, with their muted tones and soft brushwork conveying an appealing calmness. But there's a depth to the sitters or scenes she puts on canvas that goes beyond the stillness. Take the tiny self-portrait below rendered in pencil and watercolour. Although one of the smallest exhibits, it's perhaps the most striking of any in this display. 

John gave this drawing, notable for its penetrating gaze, to Rodin. She's holding a letter; we're told she wrote her lover hundreds of such missives, some as a fantasy self, an artist's model named Marie corresponding with her imaginary sister Julie about her maître, or master, thus Rodin himself.

Fantasy love letters to Rodin? That may not be what you're expecting if you know Gwen John largely from the sparse interiors she was painting at much the same time in Paris in the first decade of the 20th century.  

Another picture hung close by, La Chambre sur la Cour (The Courtyard Room), shows a single woman sewing in front of a window. It's a motif you might expect from Vuillard, though much less busy, in fact far more in keeping with the enigmatic atmosphere of a work by Vilhelm Hammershøi. And indeed, there's a typical work by the Dane on the same wall. 

John might have know about Hammershøi through the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who was Rodin's secretary for a time and with whom she became friendly. (And, we wondered, how closely did she know Rilke's wife, the sculptress Clara Westhoff, whose portrait we saw recently in the Oskar Zwintscher exhibition in Wiesbaden. The more art you see, the more connections you make....) 

As the title of the exhibition makes clear, this isn't just a show about John in Paris. Not yet 20, she enrolled in 1895 at the Slade School of Fine Art, where her brother was also studying. The Slade was the most progressive art academy in Britain; women were even able to take part in life-drawing classes. Among her fellow students: William Orpen. 

She made her first visit to the French capital, though, after graduating in 1898, enrolling at James McNeill Whistler's academy. Walter Sickert had followed a similar path. In 1904, she settled in Paris for good after a walking tour through south-west France with her friend Dorothy, or Dorelia, McNeill. Dorelia was to become Augustus's lover, living for a time with his wife Ida and giving birth to four of his children.

Gwen made a series of portraits of Dorelia, and this one of her is cool and understated, such a contrast with a canvas by Augustus that hangs alongside it, which appears so florid and chocolate-boxy.

Who was the better painter, Gwen or Augustus? Faced with these two portraits, you easily decide there's no contest. 

As you go through this show, you're struck more and more by the gaunt simplicity of much of Gwen John's work. She spent World War I in and around Paris, and the dark tones of a wartime still life-cum-interior, The Brown Teapot, evoke the austerity of the period. 

After the war, a series of paintings entitled The Convalescent appear to point to a hope of better things to come. 

John had converted to Catholicism in 1913, but that didn't lead her to focus on traditional religious images. She did, though, make a series of pictures of nuns, beginning with a commission to paint the founder of the local order of Dominicans in Meudon, on the outskirts of Paris, where she lived. Working only from a small devotional image on a prayer card, she produced a group of powerful and dignified full-scale depictions of Mère Poussepin, who had died almost two centuries earlier.

Other nuns John painted from life, in pictures that somehow reveal a human presence within the constraints of religious garb. One young nun, possibly called Soeur Babette, in one portrait seems a little sulky, while the sister below, who may have been known as Marie-Céline, looks at us rather warily. 

It's a fascinating and enlightening show, not just of Gwen John's work but also of so many other artists who were her contemporaries. Another fine exhibition in a long line at the Pallant. 

Practicalities

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris is on at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until October 8. The gallery is open from 1000 to 1700 Tuesdays to Saturdays and 1100 to 1700 on Sundays and bank holidays. Until the end of August, there's late opening until 2000 on Thursdays. Admission costs a standard £14, including a £1.50 Gift Aid donation, but you get 10% off if you book online, which you can do here. Allow yourself a good 90 minutes for this show.  

The gallery is just a few minutes walk from Chichester station, to which there's a train every half an hour from London Victoria Mondays to Saturdays. The journey takes about 90 minutes. Hourly trains on Sundays take longer. 

If you can't get to Chichester, a version of the show will be moving on for the winter to the Holburne Museum in Bath, starting on October 21. 

Images

Gwen John (1876-1939), Autoportrait à la Lettre (Self-Portrait with a Letter), c. 1907-09, Musée Rodin, Paris
Gwen John, A Corner of the Artist’s Room in Paris, c. 1907-09. © Sheffield Museums Trust
Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), Interior with Writing Table and a Young Woman, 1900, Private collection
Gwen John, Dorelia in a Black Dress, c. 1903-04, Tate
Augustus John (1878-1961), Bliss -- Portrait of Dorelia McNeill, c. 1903, Private collection
Gwen John, The Seated Woman (The Convalescent), c.1910-20. © Ferens Art Gallery: Hull Museums
Gwen John, The Nun, c. 1915-21, Tate