Gwen John

Art and Life in London and Paris

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The first critical illustrated biography of this much-loved artist, locating her firmly in the art worlds of late 19th- and early 20th-century London and Paris

A Sunday Times Art Book of the Year

One of the most significant British artists of the twentieth century, Gwen John (1867-1939) made her life and work within the heady art worlds of London and Paris.

This critical biography demolishes the myth of Gwen John as a recluse and situates her, brilliant, singular and assured, amid a rich cultural milieu that included James McNeill Whistler, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Maude Gonne. Art historian, curator and novelist Alicia Foster draws on previously unpublished archival sources to explore John’s many relationships with artists and writers, including her affair with Auguste Rodin, passionate friendships with Jeanne Robert Foster and Véra Oumançoff, and correspondence with, among others, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and her Slade compatriot and fellow painter Ursula Tyrwhitt. John’s library, ranging from writing by her friends Rilke and Arthur Symonds to French philosophy and religious thought, is considered, as is her part in the increasing presence and visibility of women artists in the early-twentieth-century art world. From the life rooms of the Slade to the Paris salons, this is the story of an artist both devoted to her craft and deeply involved in the life and creativity of her era.

With over 120 illustrations, Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris offers a lively, meticulously researched portrait of Gwen John as a vital and utterly compelling figure in twentieth-century art history.
Extent: 272 pp
Format: Hardback
Illustrations: 122
Publication date: 2023-05-11
Size: 24.0 x 16.5 cm
ISBN: 9780500025574
Introduction
1. London 1895
2. Slade Revolution
3. Whistler and After
4. Paris 1904
5. Rodin/Rilke
6. Lettres à Julie
7. A Library
8. Faith
9. From the Left Bank to the New World
10. The Convalescent and the Generals
11. Salon Life
12. A Parisian in London
13. The Modern Interior
14. The Pilgrim
15. After

Press Reviews

Foster’s study, splendidly illustrated throughout, is a genuinely critical biography: a careful gathering at every stage of John’s career of the impact on her life and work of different milieux and individuals, of her response to ideas and techniques, currents and influences, letting us see a great artist working out her own way to live, draw, and paint
Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books

In this thoughtful biography Gwen John takes her deserved place as leading lady. Recueilli was a favourite Gwen word - collected or gathered - but what takes you by surprise is her determination, her total dedication to art and, when it comes to Rodin, her sensuousness. The more you look at her initially unassuming paintings the more enigmatic, elusive and powerful they become. A present for a young woman with a room - and a will - of her own
Laura Freeman, Art Books of the Year, The Sunday Times

Exemplary in its social and art historical research
Observer

Foster shakes up the usual view of John, virtuosically reading her paintings not as quiet meditations on solitude and domesticity but as direct interventions in the world around her
Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Alicia Foster is an art historian, curator and novelist. Her publications include Tate Women Artists (2004), Gwen John (2015), Nina Hamnett (2021) and the novel Warpaint (2013), and in 2019 she curated ‘Radical Women: Jessica Dismorr and Her Contemporaries’, the first-ever museum show to focus on Dismorr, for which she also wrote the highly praised catalogue.

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