The quiet Welsh painter Gwen John was not like any other artist, male or female – she was genuinely unique. She was neither an heiress, like most unmarried modernist women, nor a conventional academic artist, like most women who had to make a living with their art.
She did not paint loud, macho work that took up a whole wall, nor sexy, objectified nudes, nor abstract forms, like many male modernists. She was fiercely herself, making small, intimate, idiosyncratic paintings that share a definite style and palette over the course of her career.
Alicia Foster’s exhibition at Pallant House Gallery is the first major retrospective of John’s work in decades. Foster is peerless in her expertise on John’s biography and oeuvre, and this exhibition feels like her magnum opus.
