There are a few better examples of the tendency to see female artists’ work through an overly biographical lens than the case of Gwen John. Her best-known paintings – quiet interiors often featuring solitary women as subjects – have fostered a myth of the reclusive artist for whom external location was irrelevant.
“The chairs and curtains and all other paraphernalia are often written about as idiosyncrasies of hers,” explains Alicia Foster, author of a new book about John and curator of the first major UK show of her work for nearly 20 years. “But artists such as Paul Cézanne, whom she adored, and Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard also adopted similar setups at the same time. And while John’s painting of a woman in a room is supposedly indicative of a lonely female artist who doesn’t go out much, the work of Cézanne and the others apparently says all sorts of interesting things about art. It’s a lazy reading. John was active in two of the great centres of art when they were at their most vibrant. What is actually important about her work is not her isolation, it is her connections.”
