'If it isn’t right, take it out!’

I recently visited an excellent exhibition of the work of artist Gwen John. (‘Art and Life in London and Paris’ is at the Pallant House Gallery, Chichester until 8 October.)

John painted pensive women in austere rooms, in soft light and closely related colours. Her portraits have a haunting stillness. They capture her sitters somber, at ease, in repose. Perhaps we see something of their true selves, their interior lives.

‘I may never have anything to express, except this desire for a more interior life.'

Born in Haverfordwest, Wales in 1876, and raised in Tenby, John was the daughter of a dour solicitor and a frail, artistic mother who died when Gwen was 8. Educated by governesses, she studied at the Slade in London, the only art school in Britain that accepted female students at the time.

In 1904 John settled in Paris, finding work as an artist’s model and falling in love with the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Six years later she moved to the suburb of Meudon to be close to him. She would remain there for the rest of her life. 

'Decide on the subject, before sleeping, for the unconscious mind.'

John’s women look contained and self-possessed. Often they sit with their hands on their lap and a slight tilt of the head; with dropped shoulders and a blank expression. A young brunette holding a black cat stares into the distance. A convalescent in a plain blue dress examines a letter, a pot of tea at her side. A woman reads a book by a gingham-curtained window, relishing the seclusion. 

John created moods of quiet isolation, of fragile presence, her sitters almost blending into their surroundings. Sometimes she added chalk to her paint to enhance the muted effect.

‘People are like shadows to me and I am like a shadow.’

When, after a decade, John’s affair with Rodin ended, she turned to Catholicism. She painted a series of portraits of the nuns at the local convent in Meudon, including a commissioned series of the order’s founder, Mère Marie Poussepin. These works perhaps provided the ultimate test of her art. The sitters’ habits and wimples suppress their individuality, but their personalities shine through in their eyes and expressions.  

‘In talking, shyness and timidity distort the very meaning of my words. I don't pretend to know anybody well.’ 

From what we know of John, she was sociable and given to intense, passionate attachments, to both men and women. But she also clearly treasured solitude, as a subject for her art and as a precondition for her creative process.

‘A beautiful life is one led, perhaps, in the shadow, but ordered and regular, harmonious. I must stay in solitude to do my work.’

John began one notebook of 1912:

'Rules to Keep the World Away
Do not listen to people (more than is necessary)
Do not look at people (ditto)
Have as little intercourse with people as possible
When you have to come into contact with people, talk as little as possible
Do not look in shop windows’

For much of her life John was overshadowed by her flamboyant younger brother and fellow artist Augustus. In the exhibition there are two portraits, side-by-side, of Dorelia McNeil, Gwen’s friend and Augustus’ lover. Augustus painted her at the outset of their relationship, in 1903, with flushed cheeks and sensuous gaze, a yellow posy in her hands. In Gwen’s portrait from later that year, Dorelia, arms folded and wearing a simple black dress, looks straight at us with an expression of silent strength. 

We get a sense that, while Augustus painted the woman he wanted to see, Gwen portrayed her as she was.

There is a lesson for us all here. We carry around with us impressions of our friends and colleagues. We regard them through the prism of our own tastes, preferences, experiences and expectations. But often our assumptions do not tally with reality, and this can lead to misunderstanding, resentment and disappointment. Perhaps we should endeavour to regard our acquaintances and associates as subjects, not objects; to see people as they are, not as we would want them to be.

'I cannot imagine why my vision will have some value in the world. And yet I know it will. I think I will count because I am patient and recueilli (contemplative) in some degree.’

For much of John’s career her sole patron was an American lawyer and art collector, John Quinn. After he died in 1924 she struggled financially and her work tailed off. She stopped painting entirely around 1933 and took to gardening. 

In September 1939, as war descended on Europe, John wrote her will and travelled without any luggage to Dieppe, a town she had visited a number of times before. She collapsed in the street and died in hospital 8 days later. She was 63.

 
'Wish you gave me your number.
Wish I could call you today, just to hear a voice.
I got a long way to go,
I'm getting further away.

If I didn't know the difference, living alone would probably be OK.
It wouldn't be lonely.
I got a long way to go,
I'm getting further away.

A lot of hours to occupy, it was easy when I didn't know you yet.
Things I'd have to forget.
But I better be quiet now.
I'm tired of wasting my breath,
Carrying on and getting upset.'

Elliott Smith, 'Better Be Quiet Now'

No.431