Review: The powerful devotion of a female gaze: a triumphant exhibition of Gwen John’s work

Gosia Buzzanca

The world is glum and filled with uncertainty. It has been raining every single day of the year so far in south Wales so the temptation to stay indoors, in comfort and warmth might be overwhelming.

However, Amgueddfa Cymru now offers the perfect antidote.

A landmark exhibition of Gwen John, one of Wales’s greatest modern artists, opens today. Celebrating the painter’s 150th birthday, Gwen John: Strange Beauties is the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work in 40 years.

Entering the exhibition’s expansive space, spanning two floors and multiple rooms, feels like an exhale. The urge to surrender and commit full attention to the artwork comes naturally. There is an immediate sense of safety in the blush pink and duck egg covered walls, and the modest in size frames are quietly inviting.

However, the modest size of the paintings, sketches and notes presented throughout the exhibition stands in a direct contradiction to how full of intimacy and brimming with life they are.

Born in 1876, Gwen John grew up in Haverfordwest and Tenby. The artistic path took her away from Wales, to Paris via London. This sounds like an exciting life, but what comes across throughout the exhibition more than anything is a sense of peaceful, yet powerful devotion.

Strange Beauties tells a story of an artist, but more importantly, of the artist’s endless commitment to the craft. Throughout the exhibition we can see previously unseen sketches and watercolours from the artist’s studio collection.

There are canvases filled on both sides that are ingeniously presented in the gallery space, a step by step progress of Pope Benedict XVs gouache with wash on paper portrait, a wall full of sketches of cats, countless and varied in size versions of St Thérese of Lisieux and her Sister.

It is the constant return to the same subjects that makes John and her Strange Beauties so alluring. It is the use of everyday materials: packaging cut up to use as a miniature canvas, brown paper, a Keats poetry book adorned with sketches.

John’s work is quiet and subtle, yes, but as one travels across the exhibition an almost punk quality of the artist herself seems to emerge.

Gwen John would continue sketching in churches despite being asked not to, she’d embrace Catholicism in the same way she embraced art — with quiet, obsessive devotion, she’d make nude self-portraits, she’d make rules for herself on the pages of notebooks (walk well; change, if possible, immediately circumstances making thought more difficult).

Something about not looking for anything new, or shiny and exciting, and focusing instead fully on the view outside of the artist’s window, on painting the same woman over 60 times, on painting one’s cats as often as a modern person would take a cute mobile photograph of them brings a meditative quality to the experience of this exhibition.

What an exquisite celebration, masterfully curated by Lucy Wood.

Gwen John: Strange Beauties is intimate yet vast, making one ponder the hugeness of everyday life. It requires slowing down, evening out of breath, diffusing of gaze.

The exhibition’s gentle self-assurance is inspiring, the female gaze can fill the observer to the brim with the magnitude of awe. If consumed attentively it is an extraordinary, unmissable gift.

One to, hopefully, return to many times before it travels away on its tour.

Gwen John: Strange Beauties is open now until 28th of June. Book tickets here.