Gwen John: Strange Beauties review — the glory of solitude
Theguardian reports that Cardiff’s National Museum has mounted a retrospective of Gwen John that plunges visitors into what the reviewer calls her “glory of her solitude”, presenting small, pale paintings of women, cats and spare Paris interiors rather than a conventional biographical narrative.
The show includes rows of variant studies — a young woman in a blue dress reading in an armchair appears in works titled The Letter, The Seated Woman and The Convalescent — and emphasises John’s austerity of means: the absence of anecdotal detail, the pared‑down portraits such as Mrs Atkinson, and a purity of inner experience in which the essential is painted and social trappings are cut away.
Also on view are her nude self‑portraits, studies connected with Auguste Rodin and the portraits of nuns after her move to Meudon and conversion to Catholicism.