1876 -1939 · Wales, London, Paris and Meudon

Silence, muted tones and inner presence make Gwen John one of the most unique portrait painters of British modernity.

Gwendolen Mary John was born in Haverfordwest, Wales, in 1876. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where the teaching of pattern drawing encouraged precise and independent observation. In 1898, she traveled to France with her friend Dorelia McNeill, then moved to Paris in 1904. To live, she posed as a model, notably for Auguste Rodin, with whom she maintained a long and passionate relationship. However, her work followed a path opposed to biographical tumult: almost empty rooms, cats, young seated women, self-portraits and religious figures made up a slow and concentrated world. From 1911, his rapprochement with Catholicism and its installation in Meudon directed a significant part of his production towards Dominican nuns. Gwen John often works in series, using the same model, the same pose or the same bedroom corner. She prepares her paintings carefully, reduces the palette to muffled browns, grays, pinks and blues, then constructs the figure in thin layers. The Nun belongs to this repeated meditation on presence, clothing and interior life. Supported by the American collector John Quinn, the artist exhibited in Paris and New York, but remained eclipsed for a long time by her brother Augustus John. Died in Dieppe in 1939, she is today recognized for a modernity based on attention, silence and repetition. The "Gwen John" selection notably compares La Religieuse. His reading favors atmosphere.

Gwen John paints what remains when the story recedes: a posture, a dull light, an almost empty wall and the inner density of a silent person.