"There is a row of variants of a young woman in a blue dress with long dark hair sitting weakly in an armchair, a table at her elbow, all painted in about 1920. In most there's a cup and teapot on the table, in one it's a bowl of soup. She looks down as she reads a letter, occasionally a book."
"Their brilliance lies in what they don't show. There are no hats covered with fruit, no chatting crowds, no omnibus, none of the anecdotal details other British artists of her generation tended to get distracted by. John cuts out the social flab and paints the essence of inner experience, the woman's sorrow, illness, despair, recovery as she sips and reads."
"It took enormous intelligence and decisiveness to paint so purely. Her earliest works are hardly more crowded than her maturest ones. Mrs Atkinson, painted in about 1898, sits in Victorian black, her elderly face battered by life, her eyes unsmiling, the precise details of hearth and wallpaper behind her underlining the bleak truth. Portraits of John's friend Dorelia on their first trip together to France are already pared down, purified, mystical. John has begun her great renunciation. She will only paint what is essential."
Cardiff's National Museum presents a retrospective that emphasizes Gwen John's spiritual, austere existence and the glory of solitude. Her paintings feature cats, sparse Paris rooms, and solitary women in moments of calm thought. Variants of a young woman in a blue dress show subtle shifts in objects—a cup, teapot, or bowl of soup—while the figure reads. Her work omits anecdotal social detail, excluding hats, crowds, and street scenes to reveal inner experience. Early portraits like Mrs Atkinson already display pared-down composition and bleak truth. John pursues renunciation and paints only what is essential.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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