The National Museum in Cardiff presents a superb, mystical retrospective of Gwen John, now perhaps the most famous Welsh artist. The exhibition plunges visitors directly into her spiritual, austere existence, celebrating the glory of her solitude. Rather than a biographical narrative, it showcases her paintings of cats, sparse rented rooms in Paris, and women alone in moments of calm thought.
John’s brilliance lies in what she omits: no hats, crowds, or anecdotal details. She cuts away social flab to paint the essence of inner experience. Her series of a young woman in a blue dress reading a letter or sipping soup captures sorrow, illness, and recovery with extraordinary purity. Her earliest works, like the portrait of Mrs Atkinson (c. 1898), already show this pared-down, mystical quality.
John’s passion emerges in her portrayal of her friend Dorelia, bathed in warm lamplight in Toulouse, and in her affair with Auguste Rodin. Her study of Rodin’s face and his bronze portrait of her reveal mutual artistic intensity. For John, nudity was natural: her self-portraits from 1908-9 show her standing naked with a sketchbook, cool and unabashed, stripping away social trappings.
Her search for simplicity also drew her to Catholicism and a series of portraits of nuns from Meudon, where she moved in 1911. Each nun appears characterful and unique within her religious uniform; one even smiles—the only smile in the show. The blue of her young women’s dresses evokes Christian purity, while The Pilgrim depicts a woman in a huge blue cape, ready for a sacred, lonely quest.
The exhibition includes a letter John wrote in 1935 to a curator at this museum, expressing her happiness that they had purchased her work. The show runs at the National Museum Cardiff, offering a rare glimpse into the inner world of a modern artist who painted with enormous intelligence and decisiveness.
