Gwen John 1876 – 1939

The Artist

Gwen John

Title

Originally titled Portrait of a Nun in the 1970 inventory. Retitled The Nun (Sister Marie Celine). Identified as Soeur Marie Celine by Cecily Langdale and D F Jenkins and recorded in the Catalogue Raisonne.

Date of Work

Circa 1915 unsigned and undated - oil on canvas 46.0 X 38.0cms

How and when Acquired

Purchased from the London dealer A Tooth and Sons by Edward Hayward in June 1948. “It was the most expensive work that the Haywards bought that year from Tooth’s. Gwen John had died nine years before and her work was increasing in popularity, in part due to two retrospectives of her paintings and drawings in 1946.” British Collection (1991,p17)

Background

Gwen John was born in England in June 1876. She was the elder sister of the well known artist Augustus John. Unlike the flamboyant, extroverted Augustus, Gwen was a passionate but quiet, introvert who craved solitude.

She attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1895 – 1898 where she studied figure drawing and the old masters.

Female art students at the Slade circa 1898

During the summer of 1898 she went to Paris with Ida Nettleship (who later married Augustus) to study at the Academie Carmen where she became a student of Whistler. She adopted Whistler’s instructions on painting and his ideas of order and discipline in tonal values and colours. As Whistler said “ I do not teach art …I teach the scientific application of paints and brushes” Langdale (1987, p17)

Gwen John Interior with figures 1989 (Ida in the pink dress)

She went back to England and finally returned to France in 1903 where she remained until her death 35 years later.

Her return to France was very unconventional particularly for a woman at that time. She decided to walk to Rome taking with her Corelia, her brother’s mistress and model. They took a steamer to Bordeaux, then walked up the valley of the Garonne, sleeping in fields and earning money by singing and drawing portraits. They stayed in Toulouse for a year, and then gave up on the idea of Rome and went to Paris.

Dorelia in a black dress 1903 - 1904

In Paris Gwen met Rodin and had a passionate affair with him which lasted for eight years. She was his mistress and his model and she dreamed of completing her journey to Rome with him. She moved to the Paris suburb of Meudon where Rodin lived.

Throughout this time she concentrated on a limited range of subjects: portraits, cats and interiors. She worked slowly and had a low output. She did exhibit at the New English Art club each year, starting in 1900 and she was befriended by John Quinn, an American art collector who made her an allowance for her paintings even though she was often unable to complete his commissions. Despite the allowance she lived in poverty and she often neglected her health.

Corner of the artists room 1907 – 09

The cat 1905 - 08

Self portrait with a letter 1907

By 1912 her passionate affair with Rodin was over. Rodin had discarded her and she was left desolate. She found the Catholic church provided solace and in 1913 she converted to catholicism. Her religion and her art became her entire life. She became friendly with the nuns near her home in Meudon. The Mother superior became her confidante and commissioned her to make a portrait of the Order’s foundress Mere Poussepin who had died in 1744.

To create the portrait she had to enlarge the image from a 1911 prayer card which itself was based on a tiny, monochromatic, engraved portrait. She painted a series of portraits in which she used the same almost muted colour palette and close tones that Whistler taught but she began to find her own style with the three quarter length pose and patchy application of paint. She implemented this style for the rest of her career.

Prayer Card of Mère PoussepinThis prayer card formed the inspiration for Gwen John’s first portrait of Mère Poussepin. J

Mère Poussepin seated at a Table, (c. 1915-20) Oil on canvasAmgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales

Mère Poussepin, (c.1915-1920)Oil on canvasThe Barber Institute of Fine Arts

Portrait of Mere Poupessin 1910 (Southampton art gallery)

She had problems completing the painting. In 1916 the nuns asked her to complete the painting in the convent but the light and the low ceilings made work difficult. According to Taubman (1985 p 124) Gwen “started to starve herself so that she could hire models which she painted over and over again. The convent refused to loan her a nun’s costume so she bought cloth and had one made. Twice it was ripped apart and remade before it was right. It was seven years before she had a portrait that she was pleased with.”

Later in 1917 Gwen received the news that Rodin had died. Then in 1919, her friend Isabel Bowser who lived at Meudon also died . She thought that she would go mad. However, after the war she began to revive describing herself “as a plant that was dying and nearly dead but beginning to grow again”.

She continued to work until the mid 1920 when failing eyesight and health prevented her from painting. From the early 1930s to her death in

September 1939 Gwen John virtually disappeared and so did her work. On September 1 she took a train to Dieppe but collapsed in the street there. She was taken to a hospice where on September 18 1939 she died.

Influences

According to Langdale the tonalism in Gwen John’s work is a legacy of her training at the Slade School where amongst others, she was influenced by Ambrose McEvoy a contemporary student. He in turn was influenced by the fine technical skills of James Whistler. She herself was taught by Whistler at the Acadamie Carmen and her very individual style was based on the tonal modelling that Whistler taught using a low key palette and a close tonal range. “Its tone that matters” Whistler once said to Augustus John “your sister has a fine sense of tone”. According to her brother Augustus, she developed the painting style learnt at the Acadamie Carmen “to the point of elaboration undreamt of by her master”.Langdale (1987, p21 )

Whistler at work

According to Holroyd, Rodin provided artistic inspiration. It was under his influence that she learned to concentrate her powers of observation.

According to Langdale 2014 “By the end of 1910 a singular characteristic of her art – her practice of repeating a composition with very little variation had become evident. The remarkable series of the convalescent model dates from this time. Her admiration of Cezanne is evident in these paintings in the intentional areas of bare canvas and in the poses and proportions of the monumental figures. Slightly later portraits have an influence of Modigliani. ‘

Style

She is best remembered for her portraits of young women often in three quarter length pose but she also painted interiors, children and her beloved cats. “She painted with great persistence and concentrated scrutiny and this led her to paint series of pictures as though they were differing and inseparable aspects of the same one”. Neve 1985

Her portraits are painted on a canvas part tinted with umber over a white priming. The picture is built up in stages each of which is allowed to dry before the next application of paint. The paint is kept thin and fluid and the drawing of detail is done with a fine sable brush.

Early works are meticulous in the Slade manner eg Portrait of Mrs Atkinson., later works are more spontaneous reminiscent of Rodin’s paintings. According to Cook “There is in fact a definable move away from the relative tightness and exactitude of the early paintings to a greater freedom and breadth in the 1920s “

Portrait of Mrs Atkinson 1897

“The women in her portraits all seem becalmed by their isolation even though some may have a book or a cat nothing is allowed to alleviate their essential loneliness.” Cook (p146) The muted range of colours confirms the air of sobriety.

The Work

According to Taubman The Nun is one of a series of eleven that Gwen John painted over a period of seven years. It is and not clear if these paintings were part of the evolution of the Mere Poussepin painting or if they were painted after it. Two sitters are portrayed in the eleven portraits. One model sat for two paintings and the other model sat for five finished and three unfinished versions.

The Carrick Hill painting is one of the eight. All depict the same model with dark arched eyebrows her hands resting on a book. Sometimes her veil is moulded close to her head (like the veil in the portrait of Mere Poussepin) and sometimes it is pulled down at an angle to her shoulder as in this picture. Other variations occur in the relative position of the hands and in the absence of the picture on the wall and the flowers on the table.

All the nuns wear the original 17th century veil although that had not been in use since the beginning of the 19th century. In water colours and drawings Gwen has nuns in the modern cornettes.

The name Soeur Marie Celine has been associated with the Carrick Hill painting since 1946 when it was sold to Edward Hayward. it was catalogued by Langdale. In a letter from Langdale to Carrick Hill she writes “I have titled the picture Soeur Marie Celine on the basis of the label on its back. It is No 45 in the catalogue raisonne “.

However, some doubt has been expressed about this name by Taubman 1985. Taubman discovered that the archives of the Sisters of the Presentation at Tours show that a sister named Soeur Marie Celine was Mautresse de classe at Meudon between 1921 and 1946. In 1921 she would have been 52 years old which would rule out the possibility that she was the model for this set of portraits.

The paintings mark an important milestone in the evolution of Gwen John’s style for they are the beginning of the style that Gwen John would implement for the rest of her career. According to Neve ( p1047) Whistler had emphasised the need for an almost obsessively organised palette with tones graded in notes like octaves a clean brush for each an no touches on the canvas until the palette was completely in order. Yet she is also creating her own style with the three quarter length pose and patchy application of paint and colour that reference Cezanne’s work

“Her brush strokes and the way that she uses patches of colour look almost like Impressionist style but according to Langdale “Gwen John cannot be called and impressionist there is far too much deliberation about her work, far too much monumental design...

Monumental design references Gwen John’s greatest influence Whistler who taught that a painting should be almost completely designed before

the brush touches the support and was a methodical approach to painting a portrait that Gwen John most diligently applied to her work.

“In these powerful paintings the monumental figure nearly fills the composition, the pose is simple and static, devoid of dramatic gesture or exaggerated expression. The model faces directly ahead with level head and an impassive gaze, arms resting close to the body hands lying heavy.

The body is a study in geometry the small oval head sloping shoulders tubular arms waistless torso and spreading skirt make a slightly flattened pyramid .. the background is as strictly edited as the figure. Detail is suppressed” Langdale 92 -93

Finally, according to Langdale. “It would be a mistake to claim too much for her. She was not a major historical force affecting those who followed she neither set new problems nor discovered new solutions. Her art for the most part turns its face from the greater world, choosing instead to explore the shy corners of feeling. But in the riches of that interior life in the beauty integrity and fierce resolve of her work lies that strange mixture of gift and will that can only be termed genius” Langdale 123

BIBILOGRAPHY

Langdale C 1987 Gwen John New Haven and London Yale University Press

Langdale C and Jenkins D F 1985 Gwen John An Interior life

The British Collection at Carrick Hill The Hayward Bequest of British Paintings ed James Schoff 1991 p 16 – 17

Taubman M. 1985 Gwen John Scolar Press

An article about her life from the Catholic magazine Crisis

Gwen John’s forgotten scholar Michael Holroyds reminiscence about a fellow biographer and scholar from tls October 22 2008

Country Life Passion and Method Gwen John 1876 – 1939 Christopher Neve 1046 – 1047

Cook R Gwen John Later Sickert and the Euston road