Gwen John

Gwen John (1876 – 1939)

Gwen John was a welsh artist who spent most of her working career in France. She is most remembered for her portraiture work and still lifes.

John didn’t begin here artistic studies until 1895, when she began at the Slade School of Art alongside her brother, the modern British artist Augustus John. She later went on to study in Paris under the tutelage of James McNeill Whistler at the Académie Carmen which became a major influence in her painting and in 1904 began modelling for the sculptor Auguste Rodin, later becoming his lover.

Although now highly respected Gwen John sold few paintings and lived a solitary life in France from 1903 until her death in Dieppe in 1939.