Gwen John: A Seer of Strange Beauties

Well, welcome everybody. Good evening on a very hot Monday night in London. We hope that you all remain cool in this room with us or wherever you are joining us from at home. My name is Sarah Turner. I'm the director of the Paul Mellon Centre and it's always a great pleasure to welcome people here for events to learn about projects, exhibitions and programs and I know we're in for a real treat this evening because we are here on what I believe is Gwen John's birthday. So we already have a celebratory atmosphere and mood going and I know that many of you are huge fans of Gwen John's work and maybe you've already made a trip to Cardiff to see the amazing exhibition that closes very soon. We can see the 28th of June, but as you see from the slides you've got plenty of other opportunities to see the exhibition at other venues if you can travel to do so. So really my job today is just to welcome you. For people in the room, just to say please do go out into the anteroom if you need water or hydration. It is exceptionally hot weather and the temperature is climbing so we want you to be comfortable. So please do go in and if you need a break or you need to go and get some water, just please you know, help yourself and do that. But without further ado, I'm going to hand over to our stellar panel of speakers and experts on Gwen John, Rachel Stratton, Lucy Wood and Patrick Elliott. So Patrick, it's over to you. >> Thank you. Can everyone hear? Great. My name is Patrick Elliott. I am Well, I was I was going to say I was at the National Galleries of Scotland. I've just moved to the National Gallery in London, where I'm curator of the new Department of Modern Paintings. I'll moderate this. I wasn't that involved in the show. The show was really a production of Lucy and Rachel and my colleague Charlotte in in Edinburgh. But just to give you some background on the exhibition. So you'll have to hear me for a little bit. I was doing it We were going to do an exhibition on Andy Goldsworthy in Edinburgh at the National Galleries of Scotland, where I worked. And we were going to do it with the Paul Mellon Cent with Yale. Um But so we had discussions about this in 2018-2019. And it eventually just transpired that doing a Paul and Andy Goldsworthy show in cities so far apart just wasn't going to work. But I was also at the time doing a grant application for a Gwen John painting in 2019 and noticed that Yale had a large number of um of Gwen John's work. So our collaboration on Goldsworthy shifted to Gwen John. That's how it started. And originally it was Edinburgh and Yale. And then during lockdown, which came in March 2020, um Cardiff came on board. And a little bit later, the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington came on board as a fourth venue. So that's the sort of background to the show. And then I had to do the Goldsworthy show and sort of step back from Gwen John. So, um didn't have much involvement in it, in fact. So, uh I'm going to be the moderator and uh I'll be the one who's asking the questions. Can you remember, um Rachel, how how it started from your angle? >> [snorts] >> Yeah, so I think it it kind of came from two directions. Um So, there was as you said, you were in touch with um Martina at the YCBA and you know, said "Have you thought about doing a an an you know, an exhibition for Gwen John's 150th?" And I think um from my perspective where I became interested in Gwen John, when I was working at the YCBA in 2020 and during lockdown, we all had to uh we were all asked to do kind of um talks about something interesting in the collection that we identified with two other members of staff. And I did a talk about women artists in the YCBA collection. And that's really when I I mean, I knew that it had a strong Gwen John collection, but that's when I really started to look more deeply at the Gwen John collection and, you know, thought this is really something that the YCBA should do an exhibition about. And so, I think those two things then came Martina then, you know, took that forward after I had left and and um and started this partnership with with you. >> And uh Lucy, do you want to say how you got involved? >> So, I got involved 3 years ago. Um so, once the partnership had been established after that. I Cardiff advertised for a curator, so I joined the team in Cardiff in 2023. Um and yeah, I've had 3 years just working with you on this exhibition and colleagues in Cardiff as well. So, it's I think it's very rare. I don't know, maybe you know more than I to have 3 years to work on one show at the moment and we're in a very privileged position that we had a partnership. So, four museums and we had a curatorial group. So, we all met well, at the beginning it was once every 6 weeks on Zoom because we're all in different places. Um and then yeah, I've just had this 3 years working purely on this project. So, it's been a real yeah, privilege to just to have dedicated time to work on one artist um and then Rachel and myself co-curated the exhibition and co-edited the book. So, we spent most of the >> [laughter] >> last summer on Zoom. Um and yeah, I think my first um time that I met you all properly and spent lots of time is we had a workshop in Cardiff. >> Right. >> Well, you'd already had one and then when I joined we had a workshop and everyone came together and we kind of work shopped the themes of the exhibition and looked at the collection as well. So, it's been a real collaboration. This is by no means a touring exhibition. So often sometimes the touring exhibitions you kind of curate an exhibition and then it gets sold as a package to another museum. Whereas this is going to change venue to venue and it was very much a working partnership with curatorial input from each of the museums, which I think is really benefited the project because I think the story that we tell in Cardiff and how we introduce Gwen John to our audiences is going to be different to how you do in Edinburgh and how you do in in Yale and Washington. So, yeah, this is a good slide because um this just this is a work from each of our collections. So, we all have It was quite an easy project to be given because by default we had quite a good body of work to begin with cuz we had our four collections. >> Do you want to to say something about the the Cardiff collections in fact? >> So, um in Cardiff we have the world's largest public collection which is over 900 drawings and watercolors and sketchbooks and oil studies um which was some of the material that she left in her We don't know which home this came out of cuz she had two homes at the end of her life. Um so, we don't know for certain which home this was in, possibly some in both. Um and this is working material. This is a studio collection. These are sketches um and drawings and watercolors that she chose not to sell and not to exhibit. So, the exhibition brings that collection into dialogue with paintings that are more well known. Um and we do have some finished oil paintings. So, the painting on the left that I've included here is one of the works in our collection and it's it's a favorite and actually it's it's one of the public's favorite as well. We had a vote during lockdown of favorite artwork in the collection and this was one of the highlights of our collection. So, this is called a corner of the artist's room in Paris which was probably not her title. Um and it shows one of her studio rooms in in Montparnasse on Rue du Cherche-Midi uh painted around 1907. And it's got a companion piece from Sheffield Museum and we've brought them together in the exhibition and I think it's interesting that it's one of her most celebrated works now but she never sold or exhibited this work so this was part of her studio collection when she died. But do you want to talk about the Yale collection? >> Yeah, so um the Yale Center for British Art's collection of Gwen John um I think the YCBA is the largest lender of oil paintings to the exhibition. Um so our founder Paul Mellon and I should say that this exhibition is one of the exhibitions that will celebrate the YCBA's 50th anniversary um because Paul Mellon our founder um absolutely loved Gwen John and he really began collecting Gwen John at the time when he was just building up his his collection of British art. So the work that you see second from left um the the woman wearing the fabulous hat um that was the first work that Paul Mellon bought and he bought it in 1965 I believe and that really was when he was just beginning to turn his hand to British art. So there was something about Gwen John because he wasn't really he didn't collect very many 20th century artists and he didn't collect very many women artists but there was something about Gwen John that he deeply loved and clearly represented an idea of Britishness to him. Something we can unpack maybe. Um but um and then he he he amassed a really stellar collection of of oil paintings and works on paper which most of which are in the in the show. >> I think you've got the second largest collection after after Wales in fact isn't it? about 20 or 30 works in all? >> Yeah. We've got I think we've got about 30 all together and and a lot of those about just under just about a third are oil paintings, yeah. >> Mhm. And the Tate have obviously got a a substantial collection of outstanding things. I think eight paintings and they've been very very generous with the loans. And then uh Num Wa or National Museum of Women in the Arts came on as the fourth venue. That was just a complete chance. Uh I think they they called from the front desk and wondered if they could have a tour when a group of their patrons came in one day and I gave them a tour and we ended up in front of the Gwen John and they all drooled over it. And um and there's a couple in their collection and that's how they became the fourth venue. And it is unusual to have um an exhibition which travels uh substantially intact so many different venues. Normally two venues, three maximum uh will work but uh often uh particularly with works on paper the lenders will will withdraw What's the glass on the floor? Um um uh uh the people will withdraw the the the works on paper but this um uh this was quite unusual. Pretty much all the works will travel to all four venues except the Cardiff works on paper which can be split. Want to sort of say how that's going to happen? >> Yeah, so it's effectively a two-year period. 2026 in Cardiff and Edinburgh and 2027 in New Haven and Washington. So we have two sets of works on paper. So it will be the core paintings will travel to all of the venues but it will be a different set of works on paper on show in New Haven and Washington. Um because uh you can't show works on paper, certainly not for 2 years, and 1 year we've got our works on paper conservative Fiona in the front row. 1 year's almost already a bit of a stretch for works on paper. So, we have got very low light levels on the works on paper in the exhibition. Um but one of the things about our collection is that it hasn't been exhibited that much, and it we we haven't exhibited it that much. We haven't lent the collection that much. We purchased this collection 50 years ago in 1976. Um and because it hasn't been exhibited so much, we think that it might be one of the only collections where the colors, particularly in the later watercolors in our collection, are it maintained, retained as she would have intended them and laid them down. So, we know that she was using synthetic pigments um in the '20s and the '30s, possibly earlier, I'm not sure. And these, which Fiona can talk about perhaps possibly more if we get into technical things, we do know that these colorants are prone to fading. Um and she was aware of that as well. So, some of her notes write she writes fugitive in the margin. So, she knew that the colors that she was choosing what might fade. Um so, we're very um cautious about how and we've thought a lot about how we exhibit these works and how we preserve them for the future. >> Hi. >> Can I just make one before we move on? I just wanted to say about the Nim Wa collection that um it's also their 50th anniversary exhibition. Um and that's because Gwen John was also a favorite artist of their founder Wilhelmina Halliday, who was in the '70s and 80s onwards, um amassing this amazing collection of women artists, and she speaks in an interview about how Gwen John is one of her favorites. >> So, there's lots of anniversaries. It It's In fact, it's the 150th anniversary of her birth today, and then Cardiff bought the works to mark the centenary, wasn't it? From the estate. From Edwin, was that? >> Yeah, so the so I should say that some of the works were sold after her death, so we don't have all of the works left, but yeah, we purchased this from her estate in the 70s. It's also the 100-year anniversary of her solo exhibition, which I quite like, which would have been on now 100 years ago. So, it was on in May and June at the New Chenil Gallery. Um when she was 50. So, it's That's quite a nice anniversary as well. Yeah. >> So, that's the mechanics of sort of how the show came about. Um before we go on to the sort of more philosophical issues of why we're doing after all what her work means to us, can you comment on the title of the show? >> As Strange Beauties. >> Yeah. >> So, as you can imagine, choosing a title for four museums was complicated. >> complicated thing of the whole show, wasn't it? >> [laughter] >> That was really hard. We had Zoom title workshops. Um It It should have been straightforward because we're um well, it it was translated into Welsh. Um but it translates quite well. Um so, she referred to herself She In 1922, she started referring to herself as God's little artist in her notebooks, and she followed this with a seer of strange beauties, a teller of harmonies, a diligent worker. And we've co-written an introduction to the book called Strange Beauties, and the exhibition is called Strange Beauties. It's an idea that comes up a lot in her writing and both strange beauties sometimes in the singular sometimes just strangeness sometimes strange form so it feels when you read her writing it felt like a very significant aspect or or thought that she had in terms of how she thought of herself as an artist um I think it can be interpreted in different ways but one of the things that we have tried to articulate in the in the introduction and this is a theme that comes out in her writing but also the extracts that she copies from philosophers so on that she's reading is an idea of kind of trying to capture what's unusual or enigmatic about a subject um and look at a subject as if for the first time so capture its strangeness um >> We went through dozens and dozens of different titles. >> [cough and clears throat] >> I remember we put them into an AI uh sort of search engine which came up with some quite good alternatives. >> No. >> [laughter] >> So what what were you looking for when doing a Gwen John show? What were you both what did what did you both hope to achieve? Why Gwen John? >> Um I mean Gwen John has always been an artist that I've been really drawn to and I think what initially drew me to her was the fact that she was this kind of amazing woman artist and that she her work is is not only was she a woman artist but her work is is so about being a woman or about the experience of being a woman and that it captures that across different periods of time across different generations somehow people always are drawn to her work um particularly women, I think, but not exclusively, um because it it's it really seems to kind of capture something of the female experience. So, that was the hook for me, but then I think once we got into the research it was so interesting how she'd been presented. And you know, there's been some fabulous scholarship on Gwen John, um and we owe a lot to, you know, all the people who have written biographies and done exhibitions of of her work in the past. But a lot of it had been done through the lens of her biography. Um and so, as we were looking at her work, we were reading her archive and we were and you know, and reading the scholarship, and we were just noticing that, you know, there hadn't What we really wanted to do was think about her practice and and understand her what what she was trying to get at as an artist. Um and so, that that was the really exciting thing I found. >> I agree. >> [laughter] >> Um Yeah, I would I would say we we talked a lot about um how to do an exhibition that is chronological cuz the exhibition is chronol- That was important to us. Although she stopped dating her work, so it's also complicated. But we wanted to show the progression of her work. But we we wanted to move away from who she was as a person, and we wanted to explore her life through the work so that you have these different narratives that are being told. So, each of the rooms and each of the chapters of the book um explores what we think is a kind of key facet of her as an artist. Um [snorts] it's not non-biographical. The The life is there, but I think what this show does, I hope, or what we wanted to achieve, is to show the breadth of her art. I think showing so many works on paper really does expand, um well, it expanded my understanding. So, I think most people come to Gwen John through the paintings, in my experience of people that I've spoken to, and I did come to her through the paintings. I worked at the National Portrait Gallery, um before this, and loved their self-portrait, which is not in the exhibition, um because it's too fragile to travel. And I think what something that's so interesting about the works on paper is that it shows a kind of broader range of subject matter, and a kind of different approach to the medium, which is obviously Obviously, it's a different approach to the medium, but it's very rare that she um makes drawing studies for paintings. She considered her drawings works on paper in their own right. So, >> and she does often say that the drawings are worth have the same value to her as the paintings. >> Yeah, it was a a to John Quinn was that the letter? No, or as you later wrote. Um she said that her works on paper were quite as serious as the paintings. So, this was when she was exhibiting her works on paper at the Salons in Paris after the First World War. She exhibited um one of her paintings of Mlle Puvis de Chavannes alongside a set of Breton children. >> Can we talk a little bit about the chronology? So, she's born in 1876 and goes to the Slade in 1898, I think. Um no, a little earlier than that. Can you walk us through the early chronology? >> Sure. Um so, she was born in Haverfordwest in West Wales in 1876 um and grew grew up in Tenby. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1890s. And these paintings that we're looking at really relate to the Slade. Uh, so this is one of the most advanced art schools in Britain. Um, she was really uh part of the first generation of women that received a formal art education. And we thought a lot about what she learned there and how she kind of, I think, developed the foundations of her practice at the Slade although she completely moves away from this style of painting. She does um you can see that she's beginning to work in close earthy tones. I think she was influenced by Actually, it's really interesting to have the Whistler exhibition on now. I kind of wish it happened before that we started working on the exhibition cuz I I think it has made me understand Gwen John better and um seeing them so many of those works in the flesh. Um, so Whistler was a key influence on Slade artists of the period. Um, and I particularly love these two works that we've got here. So, a self-portrait which is on loan from Tate going to all four venues. Yeah, you said very generous with their loans which is fantastic. This was painted after the Slade. And it's very different to the National Portrait Gallery self-portrait. And then on the left right >> Mhm. >> confused [laughter] Um a portrait of her landlady which is on loan from the Met. And this this such a fantastic work. Um it's so small. I just want to emphasize how small it is. And this painting, so it's her landlady Mrs. Atkinson, and it was included in I'm looking cuz we've got a mirror here so we can kind of see the slides. This is included in her exhibition in 1926 and it was one of the paintings that the reviewer of that exhibition pulled out and um uh described Gwen John's ability to find beauty in drabness and described her as a modern Vermeer. >> And that's around the time that she goes to Paris and studies with Whistler as well. I think that's in late '98. >> So in '98 she goes to Paris and she studies at Whistler's Academy Carmen. Um So yeah, a key influence on her work. She comes back to London after that period and finally goes to she embarks on a walking journey to Rome with her friend Aurelia McNeill in 1903. They they never get to Rome but they get to Toulouse where they spend the winter and abandon the journey and in Paris uh in 1904 they head to Paris where she lives for the rest of her life. So those are the chronological Um yeah, so they uh love this pair of paintings. So we were really keen to bring together pairs of paintings in the exhibition. >> That's something that marks her work. We're working in series, isn't it? >> Okay, can you come in here? >> Yeah, so that's one of the things that is is really um it it it is very it's very prominent when you look at her work all together that she's um she begins to work in series and and the way she begins to work in series is actually by working in these pairs of paintings. So um the first one of this pair that she does is a lady reading um and for that she used um a a portrait of a painting of the Virgin Mary by Albrecht Dürer as as the she used the face of of this Virgin Mary. Um and there are kind of covert references to her relationship with Rodin in there particularly in the pose of the woman which is um a the the same pose as the monument to Whistler talking Whistler that that Gwen John posed for for Rodin. >> Don't just mention that she was an artist model for >> She was an artist model for Rodin. Also she had a a kind of 10-year love affair romance with with Rodin if for anyone who didn't know that. So and that had been one of the kind of ways in which she was looked at early in her life and but you know it's been a while now since she's been kind of stood up stood on her own two feet I think. But um so yeah so that was the first that was the first one she did and that painting was actually bought by the Contemporary Art Society in Britain which was tasked with buying work because they felt that the Tate was not buying contemporary art. So they would buy up contemporary art and then they would sort of lobby to get some of that contemporary art into public museums in the UK. And that did end up at Tate. It was one of the first it was the first work by Gwen John to enter a public museum. And then she makes a second version where she swaps out the Dürer face for self-portrait. Um and she changes some of the objects in the background and so you can see that she's beginning to think about how different details and slightly different compositional structures change the way change the meaning, change the atmosphere. Um and yeah, and then this work was shown in It was It was bought by John Quinn, who was the American collector um of of modern art in New York City. Uh he was kind of amassed the biggest avant-garde collection in in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, he didn't bequeath it to any museum, so then it all got you know, dissipated after his his his death. Um but he bought this work, and he became for the rest of his life He died in 1924, and he for the rest of his life he became an avid patron of Gwen John's. He absolutely adored her. He paid her an annuity, so he kind of funded her to to make work regardless of whether she gave it to him or not. Um and he shipped this over to New York, and he put it in the Armory Show in 1913, which was the kind of where um European modernism sort of It was European modernism's entrance into the American um psyche, and uh they didn't like it initially. >> [laughter] >> I mean, they like they liked Gwen John, actually. There's um She She represented something a bit more palatable for them, maybe, but there was Yeah, so she this this work was in that show. >> So, and the one on the left, it was bought, I think, by the Contemporary Art Society in 1911, and lent to a number of shows, and then given with another painting, a nude, uh to to the National Gallery of British Art, the Tate, in 1917. Uh the Tate was only called the Tate in 1932, and that was It was actually a sort of a a division of the National Gallery even then. But I think by the '30s, there were a number of her works in uh by the early '30s, there are a number of her works in in UK public collections. So, she wasn't >> Mhm? >> By the 30s also US, UK, and US. >> So, she wasn't unknown. But, she was a she wasn't a productive painter though. I think there are about there are a number of unfinished or slightly sketchy works. So, there are maybe 120 or something like that. >> 130 to 150. >> Do you reckon 150? Is that with the sketchy ones as well? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, maybe yeah, a little less of the finished works. And how many have we got in the exhibition? >> Oh gosh. It's about 200 works in total. I need to know >> The oils would be about is it 50 or so? >> It's roughly half half. >> Yeah. That's amazing to have got so many. Why do you think she was she had a career spanning nearly 40 well, about 40 years. Why do you think she was wasn't a productive painter? >> It's it's really interesting cuz I actually think that's quite a lot. >> Mhm. >> Like I find that quite a lot of paintings. I know it's not by some standards. Um And she also was a prolific works on paper artist. >> about three or four oils a year. >> It's a lot. >> Mhm. >> [laughter] >> It's quite >> I think. >> Yeah. But, she she wasn't Well, John Quinn for example, he had this annuity that he was paying. She wouldn't she he wanted as many works as she he could get. And she just didn't want to part with them. >> I think >> She was quite fussy about finishing things. You didn't really want to let anything go. >> fussy about finishing things. She was an extreme perfectionist, I think. And um that meant that she often didn't feel that it could could you know, enter into the public realm. >> Mhm. >> Um and she Yeah, so I think she she she was very very critical of her own >> And she was offered a show in 1930, I think, and in New York and and >> Yeah. >> and and and didn't send that off. >> Yeah, so she was meant to have her She She'd had her first her own The only solo exhibition that she actually had in her lifetime was this one at the New Chenel Galleries in London, but she was supposed to have her a solo exhibition in New York at the Ferragil Galleries, which was a kind of avant-garde gallery, um and she just didn't send the work. >> [laughter] >> And And actually, I found um an an advertisement in a kind of magazine for the exhibition, so it must have been really last minute that she said, "I'm sorry, I'm not sending any work." Cuz they'd advertised it. >> So, she was exhibiting mainly at the New English Art Club, and then also at the salons in Paris, the Salon d'Automne, and also some of the more conservative salons, the >> Yes. >> Société des Artistes Français and the >> She was not She She She She was not um She didn't She was She was happy for her work to be understood both within a kind of avant-garde modernist context and within a more academic tradition. So, she exhibited at many at multiple different salons, uh Salon d'Automne, but also um others, and um yeah, and and she Yeah. >> So, you used the word modernist there. Um how would you Would you define her as a modernist? >> I would. Um and I think that that's I did. Yes. >> [laughter] >> Yes, and a plug for the catalog there. >> Um I think that's something That was a That was a revelation, I think, for me in the research that I did that I that I went into it thinking that perhaps she wasn't well, she was a modernist in the broadest sense of the term in that she was working in the in the period of modernism, but um I when I went into it, I didn't I wouldn't have classed her as that, but then especially looking at her works on paper, thinking about the way that she used repetition and seriality, looking at the move from this kind of empirical realism through to the later works, which are much more kind of abstracted and more interested in the surface of the of the canvas, and then the you know, the way that the the watercolor moves around the paper, I I have come to understand her as a modernist. >> It's interesting that research that was done a lot by you two. I hadn't realized that there was a chance of a a show together with Marie Laurencin at one point. And then I did know this, but John Quinn was hoping to introduce her to to Brancusi, which looks like two people from different worlds sort of colliding. I don't think they ever did meet. >> [snorts] >> Um [clears throat] Shall we move on to some of the technical issues now, which I think is um one of the chief sort of assets of the show, looking at her um her watercolor technique, her way of scaling things up. We've got um uh an image here that shows the the um the squared up the the sort of squared um patterning of the of the um canvas, and she's um squared up through that um process. Can you talk a bit about that, either of you? >> Yeah, so this is a one of our paintings of Mer Pissarro, which is in the exhibition, and this is an infrared image, which Rachel Beard um took. And I should say that colleagues did do lots of technical research into our paintings for the exhibition in 2004. Um, and we've been able to kind of build on that research. But one of the things that we did learn when we working on the project is that very few of Gwen John's paintings in public collections have had technical analysis. So, we each of our institutions had our paintings looked at. Um, so we took infrareds working across our different teams and we also worked with Tate and we worked with Ashmolean. They took, um, infrareds of their paintings to be able to kind of come together and look at some of the works. Um, the convalescent series which we'll come on to later, that was a group that we looked at across, um, across our collections. But here we have her it's it's an image which shows that she used a grid. So, this painting is based on a prayer card. So, in to continue the story, >> So, it's a little postcard just the size of a card. >> prayer card, tiny, this big, um, >> [snorts] >> which we've got in the exhibition. Her prayer card that she used. And so, she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1913. And at the same time, around this time, received this commission from the local convent to paint a portrait of Mepy Spiers which she basically worked on for the 1910s. And she made multiple portraits of Mepy Spiers. And yeah, on the next slide we've got them all together. This is how they look in the exhibition. Um, and it's just such a fascinating group because it kind of ties in with what your previous question about how is she a modernist, I think. I think across this group you can see her completely changing her painting style. So, she begin moves away from the fluid oil layers that she was taught at the Slade, which is a kind of more academic technique, and starts painting in these thick blob she calls it blobbing the staccato brush strokes. But also starts to really reduce her compositions and pair back her composition. So, the works on this hand this side um more closely relate to the prayer card image. And I think although we don't know that these were painted later, it is she she moves towards this more simplified composition which kind of speaks to what you were just saying Rachel, this kind of simplification of form. Just the triangular shape. So, it kind of the subject matter begins to recede and it's more about the kind of geometric arrangement of the canvas. >> often a triangular form in the compositional structure, isn't [laughter] there? >> Lisa should speak to that. Yeah, we we talked a lot Yeah, triangles. When you start to look for them, they're everywhere in her work and the works on paper and the paintings as well. Um one of the observations that I love in the literature on Gwen John is Lisa Tickner referred to Gwen John's convalescence as her Mont Sainte-Victoire. >> Right. >> So, so likening Gwen John repeatedly returning to the same subjects to Cézanne and I think it's just such an astute observation. >> And there's a terrific essay in the catalog by Anna Gruetzner Robins, who's here, uh where she draws attention to Monet's Rouen series. >> Yeah. >> Which I think there were four of them in the Courtauld collection in um in Paris by the late 1890s, which she could easily have seen and um may have informed this kind of uh approach that she had. >> Yeah, I guess the artist that she was influenced by Whistler, Cézanne worked in series. So, I think it kind of roots her in a particular tradition. >> Mhm. >> I mean, I don't think she would have hung the works like this. So, we did have kind of debates about how to hang the show, you know, what's a set and what's a series, and would she have exhibited works as series, and would she have used the word series? So, it's complicated, but it is fascinating to look at. >> How was she sort of financing things, the whole if she wasn't selling much? I know she was getting the annuity from um from Quinn, but did she have private money? >> No, she didn't. So, she um initially, she had some support from her father. Her mother died when when she was quite young. So, and her father um supported her up until um it was 1904, wasn't it, that he came to visit her in Paris? And she was wearing a dress that she had made uh based on a painting by Renoir, was it? >> Manet. >> [laughter] >> Um and he he disapproved of this dress, um and that was it for her. She said, "Well, you know, I want to live my life the way I want to live it." So, she cut herself off from him, and from that moment on, she was financially independent, and she was hard up a lot of the time. I mean, so, from 1904 to um 1912, which is when Quinn starts paying her the annuity, she funded herself by modeling. And that's how she came into Rodin's orbit, but she also modeled for many women artists in Paris at the time. Um and so, she was funding herself like that. And then, when she got the annuity from from Quinn, she was able to slowly stop modeling. >> But, the last 10 years of her life or cuz he died in what, 25 was it? >> 24, yeah. >> Um so, and she died in 39. She would have been living through sales of her work, do you think? >> I mean, she must I I presume, but and and kind of >> simple life that was good. >> Very simple. I mean, she did get increasingly hard off, and she, you know, um people there are lots of letters um with about friends sending her gifts of clothing and that sort of thing. So, she but so, she was living a very, very simple life. And you can see that in the materials which Fiona um who is sitting here, who is the paper conservator at National Museum of Wales, has some amazing research on which is also in the catalog. Um you know, her materials, she starts working on paper from the um Colmagasin du Louvre in Central Palace the in Central Paris, the department store. She goes there and she uses the pen and paper, the ink and paper there. And presumably, that's partly at least because it was it was freely available. And you also start to see her working on um the backs of of advertisements, of cardboard boxes. So, you can sort of see her her you know, her her poverty kind of coming through in the materials. >> Shifting on now to the uh watercolors and there's um hundreds of They weren't in fact, I think, on the Cardiff website when we started. Um and there were sort of eight or 900 of them. >> They are now. They're being reorganized currently. Um but there are the images are on on the website, which is brilliant. So, we've um got a brilliant photographer, Rian Israel, who I just mentioned, who's um been working on the collection, and it's such a fantastic resource to have um the images available, cuz it makes such a difference with people being able to access them. Um so, here's three images of some works from our collection. So, probably the largest group of works in our collection are studies in church. And she would go to the church and draw congregants. >> Sitting in the back row. >> Sit Yeah, sitting at the back. Um in one of And focusing on the kind of details, you see the nuns' clothing and the orphans' clothing again and again, and the ladder-back chairs. Uh she has particular motifs that she returns to. But, I think these are interesting because you obviously have the progression. So, um she probably drew in dry media in church most often, although possibly watercolor later. Um the outlines, we were saying earlier. Um and take took her studies home and worked up multiple versions in different colors and experimented with them. >> would have been done in the studio. >> I think so. I mean >> There looks to be some kind of copying or tracing going on as well. I think the two on the left look identical. What's the process there? Is that holding them up to a window? >> Few minutes. We know Do we look at these ones for tracing? No. Not these ones. Just [laughter] had to check. >> on the left look before look almost identical. >> Yeah, so I think there is some evidence. It was definitely earlier on in her career, so um when she was living in Montparnasse, she talks about tracing. Um and then we do think there is some evidence of tracing later, and yeah, holding works up to a window and copying the outlines. and you can see in our collection evidence of marks left on the following page. So, interesting. >> Yeah, there's never as far as I know any effort to make an oil painting of the subject. It dominates the works on paper >> Yeah. >> boxes, but there's there are no ditto um there are lots of landscape um drawings in and around Meudon in the in the woods there, but uh very few paintings of the same subject. Why do you think that was? Why did they split into two different types, you think? >> Yeah. Do you want to come in? Um well, I think yeah, you do see a different range of subject matter, and I think this is clearly a kind of out of the studio subject cuz she's in in church, you know, whereas the paintings are more formal portraits um of models posed in her room. So, there's a kind of practical element, but also something about the swiftness of watercolor, I think. It captures something. It's a They have a very different quality. Um the works on paper, which I think's interesting. It's not a preparatory stage for painting. >> it doesn't look That's right. So, we're moving on to the convalescent here. There's uh I think there are 11 of this Is it seven or 11 of this particular? >> 11. >> Um and we don't know who the who the the sitter is. The sitter posed for about 60% of the oil paintings, and we don't or with the with the sitter in them, and we don't know who she is. >> Yeah, so as you say, she she was the subject of over 60 of the oil paintings, and um she as she's only referred to by Gwen John as a neighbor in Meudon. She She mentions her by name. She never mentions her in any other way. So, and she never even mentions her as a paid model. So, we don't even know whether she presumably I hope she was being paid >> [laughter] >> having sat that many times. Um but she she so she was presumably a person local to her studio in Modane, which was where she moved in in 1911. And um what's interesting about these works when you see them in the exhibition well, not in yours that these ones are in a slightly different room, but that we there's a room where there's just works of this woman, this model. And you can see that actually at this point the they are portraits, but she's not trying to to capture any kind of individual likeness, individual character. She's really using the model as a vehicle for experimentation with painting. And she talks about wanting to to to develop and and get to grips with the rules and problems of painting. So, these So, the model really becomes secondary to her interest in working with the media. >> That's a good book. Um and they're all tiny, aren't they? Um I think the tallest one is about probably about 55 cm tall, something like that. >> Yeah, I I Something that was really interesting is when you have lots of them together like this, the difference in scale. Scale scaling her subjects. >> The pilgrim ones are probably the largest and >> The the the pilgrim ones are the largest. >> yeah. But by about 2 cm I think, aren't they? Um they'll be about 80 cm tall. And there's another series with the same woman. Um same woman, different cat. >> [laughter] >> But that's part of a longer series. There are other drawings of the same series. And they're Are they all in the show? >> Yeah, [snorts] so this is um part of the room that we were just talking about. And I suppose this is an example where you do have her drawing her model um in preparation for painting. Um but I think this is interesting because it shows how she worked in sections where with the unfinished painting um which which is quite unusual, I think, and really interesting. This is obviously an abandoned painting. Um and she drew her cats, made many watercolors of cats, but you don't see cats very often in the paintings. Um so yeah, this is a This is a really loved series in the exhibition, so I put them in here. >> Uh another interesting thing I um was reading Anna's essay and uh Gretchen Robins' essay on and just drawing attention to how similar they are to um some of Cezanne's late works, particularly the hands, the way they're um held at the bottom there. And just an aside about dating. They're all You can see they're all circa 1920. There's a That's guesswork. Um informed guesswork, but because she didn't date her works from about 1910 or exhibit them consistently or with the same titles, um it's pretty much guesswork what the dates are and also how the how her style develops or doesn't develop over uh over the years. >> [laughter] >> This shows the top image shows the lip. That's a tiny little detail of the lip. And then I think the bottom one is one of the little orange curlicues that uh on the wallpaper behind. But just shows you the incredibly dry technique that she had, the dry medium. Very um um spare with the sort of oil medium. Do you want to comment on that, Rebecca? It's very It's unique, as far as I know. A little bit like we are, but much, much drier, quite cakey. And it's all sort of started crack and uh uh you've got these holes developing in the in the fabric of the of the paint. >> Yeah. So, these photographs are taken by Rachel Beard. So, it's really nice to have uh who's here and nice to have kind of close-up images. Um And I think they both show how kind of that single brushstroke for the orange circle is is so lovely. And also the lips. We tried to recreate the ground that she paints on in our workshop. >> [laughter] >> Uh we weren't very successful. Um so, she had a kind of recipe that she would create a a a white ground by mixing chalk and animal glue. Just checking. Um before applying paint to And I Yeah, she had these blobs, these kind of bubbles that formed. And I think where we got to is that that was formed by vigorously mixing the chalk and glue. Yeah. So, she Yeah, we couldn't manage to do it, no matter how vigorously we mixed it. >> And from the back of the paintings, you can often see right through them, can't you? It's quite an unusual technique that she's got. Moving on to Do you want to come >> Yeah. So, the So, then we have an exhibition in the room and room in the exhibition called Harmonies of Color, and these are two works that are in that room. And this is the moment in the exhibition, I think, where we've brought together you see a a quite an interesting relationship between the paintings from the 20s as yeah, dating is very difficult. I should say that the dating um arrangement that we arrived at was circa means plus or five >> [laughter] >> plus or minus five years and we're not we're not sure but we do think that she started working with this model in around 1923. >> [snorts] >> Um and you can see that she's using a very different color palette. She's been using the kind of cool grays and blues prior to this and she starts using these kind of purples and greens in the paintings which are so beautiful in the flesh. So you do really have to see those works. I think one of one of the really interesting things once you kind of step away from trying to create a a chronological progression what I think's really interesting about Gwen John is she's very responsive to the subject. So with oh with with this woman with the um mulberry dress model she her technique changes and it may be because you know, she's starting them later but it may also be because the model and the clothing that she'd put the model in kind of warranted a slightly different technique um and a slightly different palette. So she's really kind of using the subject as a jumping off point to then kind of think about technique and color. >> Any idea how many sittings these would have taken? Is it sort of 10 to would they taken a couple of months or with some of them do you think painted over a couple of years? Is there anything in the correspondence that gives a hint of that? >> There's you go ahead but Well, I don't have a good answer for this question. It's really hard to know. There There is a letter where she said a painting ought to be done in one sitting or two at most but we you know, this is also a life's work and she probably evolved her methods and her sittings over time. So, it's it's hard to know. She she certainly went back to paintings later. Um yeah. >> We're just coming up to the um hour. That's the final room. What a fabulous room it is. And the show's ending on >> So, the show closes on Sunday, um which is very sad, but it doesn't finish because it goes to Edinburgh. Um so, we've got many more works in the presentation, but if we're at our hour, perhaps we can look at them in the Q&A as well. So, yeah, I suppose we come on more to the works on paper because many of the works in our collection are from the later years. Um so, if you click once more, I'm not sure why it's done that, but yeah. So, this is in the room about color, these works in the exhibition. And this is really special, this work here. So, this is I the only instance that we know of where she's um using her numbered system on a watercolor. So, um yeah, we can talk about that a bit more in the Q&A possibly. So, we have um >> Did you manage to decode that? >> No. No. I was sure that we would. But so, for for everyone's information, she used a a numbering system which we think relates to colors or tones, um but it's it remains a mystery what that is. >> There are lots of things that remain a mystery though, aren't there, about Gwen John? >> Yeah, it's but I think Yeah. I think what what we show in this section of the exhibition is that she was um her approach to color is incredibly technical. So, you both have these um you have these very poetic color notes. So, I I really I like this um example here where you have the kind of mixture of a kind of poetic color note with a list of the colors that she's using, but also this kind of very analytical approach to color as well. And she's reading color theory. And yeah, that's kind of explored in her notebooks in this section of the exhibition. But do you think we should um >> That's uh >> [laughter] >> Should we should we pause on this slide and go to questions and then we can come back to it? >> I'll just ask >> Okay. >> you a final question, which is what you think you've learned from from from doing the exhibition. What you started off thinking, what you ended up thinking. >> I think um I started off thinking that I knew where this exhibition was going or what I what I wanted to say about Gwen John and um what's been great, I think, is that through looking at the work I have come up with more questions than answers. >> [laughter] >> And that's, you know, to me that's that's the mark of a great artist that she's just, you know, there's there's so so much more to discover about her work, I think. Um the way she worked and um and why she was doing certain things, I think. Um once you start looking at them more closely, you kind of it it becomes more and more of a of a mystery. >> Yes. >> Similar to that and I was a little bit daunted by the fact that we were going to have six curators working on the exhibition and there's already been there was an exhibition by Alicia Foster, a brilliant exhibition um that opened the month I started. So I was like how are we going to do a major exhibition? But actually what's been fantastic about working on this is we've got nine writers in the book and and we were worried that we would have to do a lot of editing because there would be a lot of repetition between the essays and actually when they came in, there really wasn't and everyone was looking at quite a different theme and approaching this from a different angle and I found it quite heartening because it confirmed the fact that and there will be more in the future. You know, scholars in the future will work on Gwen John and say something new and I quite like that that there is there's space to explore avenues and we haven't done it all. >> But it was the first retrospective since the Barbican show of the late 80s, I think, wasn't it? >> So there have been exhibitions. There was a major exhibition in 2004 which was a joint exhibition with Augustus John. >> Tate Britain, wasn't it? >> Yeah and that came to Cardiff. And then Alicia Foster put on an exhibition in 2023 which showed Gwen John alongside other artists. So this is a solo exhibition. >> wasn't it? >> and Paris. Um so this exhibition is a solo exhibition. That was very important to us that we wanted her to have an exhibition um on her own. Um and it's it's big. There's about 200 works in it as well. So it's a it's a large retrospective that includes works from all stages of her career. Um Yeah. Uh yeah. >> Great. I think you've answered pretty much every question going. Uh can we open it up to the audience here for any questions? >> Please wait for the mics. >> Um I'm really Thank you. That was really wonderful, but I'm really interested as well in this idea that it is the same exhibition, but it's going to these four different places and it's going to change as it goes. And so, I wonder if you could maybe talk just a little bit more about that and what it means to have an exhibition which, I presume the title isn't changing and the kind of the main emphasis, but that sort of curatorial process and how much each of your your individual institutions are then having an impact on what happens in the individual spaces, if you know that already. >> Yes, so the the core of the exhibition is the same and that so, you know, Lucy and I worked very closely as Lucy said, we spoke probably every day multiple times a day >> [laughter] >> for years. So, um the the kind of themes and the and the core of the works like all the paintings are the same. Most of the paintings. Uh the works on paper have to change because of the light sensitivity, but beyond that, there's also the fact that, you know, this has been it's really interesting to have done this exhibition about Gwen John with an international partnership because in Britain, Gwen John is this kind of national treasure. And in America, she's very little known now. So, we So, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the YCBA have been thinking about how we how we introduce her really or reintroduce her to American audiences. Um so, that's that's been something that we've like slightly um kind of tweaked some of the the you know, the the interpretation. >> In what sense? That's interesting. >> Well, so for instance, we I mean, I think, you know, the the the opening panel at the at the car in Cardiff, it um I think people going into that exhibition probably have some idea of what who Gwen John is. Whereas in in the Whitechapel exhibition we will we will kind of open with a statement about you know the fact that she became hailed as a new woman figure of the new woman and that she kind of focused on women throughout her in her work throughout her life. You know those are those are kind of things that >> we haven't really mentioned actually. Thank you. >> [laughter] >> All the all the paintings are women. Is that >> Almost all yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah and that that's just really nice that um there's there's kind of this body of work that is gets adapted and we all kind of work together and we have this group so we kind of workshop against each other but um yeah so Rachel and I have worked closely and then we've worked with curators of all of the venues as well who have all had creative input and the book is a product of all of our organizations um which is really nice to do actually like if you're just doing an exhibition catalog um which you author and it has to be an overview of the project you can't I think sometimes go into so much depth but it meant that we could each go deep into one theme so I wrote about religion and philosophy and Rachel the way wrote about her >> [snorts] >> um reception and international reception um and those aren't themes you kind of plunge into with an overview so we hope that the book will have a life after the exhibition as well um so yeah I hope >> I've been able to visit this exhibition on a number of occasions and many of my friends have gone multiple times and I'd firstly like to compliment you on an excellent presentation of this artist's work, at least in Cardiff. And it's her technique which certainly I found very impressive, but I'd like to pick up on something you started off with which is there's a gender difference in appreciation in that you mentioned that she's a you said captures women's sensibility. And certainly from the people I know who visited this women seem to relate to this much better than most of the men. Can you would you like to comment on why having immersed yourself in her work that might be? >> Good question. >> Would you like to? >> [laughter] >> It was only because um I mean I could, but because you said that at the beginning which I thought you put so beautifully. >> [laughter] >> Um so Um so [clears throat] I think that so I'm going to answer this in part by speaking about the way that it uh her work is represented in a book by a novel by Margaret Forster called Keeping the World Away. It's a fictional novel and it follows one painting by Gwen John. We don't know which one. It could be a you know made up work, but we know that it's an interior. And over the course of the book multiple I think it's maybe four three or four different women in different time periods come to own this work and it comes to mean something to them. Um and it kind of speaks to them in their very different time periods and their very different lives and situations. Um and I think that there is something about the way that Gwen John captures the um I would I don't want to say the mundane cuz it's not mundane but the ordinary, the the everyday but not in but that but she's doing it in a way that kind of gives weight and and importance to the objects of the everyday and I think that that somehow speaks to women who are you know, I don't know why. I actually don't really know. >> not doing the male gaze, is she? >> She's No, it's it's so much about >> The interiority of the female She imports so much weight and importance into these objects that are hers that you come to feel >> a kind of emotional attachment to them and I think there's something in that that is >> So do you think Do you think if you didn't know anything about Gwen John or or um the history of art and you came to the pictures, do you think you'd be able to tell that they were by a woman? >> I think so. >> What about Weir are though cuz there's a strong rapport between her work and Weir or even Morandi? I've often wanted to do a show or at least to display united all three. Very similar technique and color range. >> Yeah. >> Oh, I'm not sure what I'd say about them. I don't know if I've looked enough. But I I think what I would say and that what I liked about what you said earlier Rachel is that her subject is women from the beginning from the really early works. So the first painting that we have in the exhibition by her, the landscape at Tenby, it wasn't part of the presentation, depicts women. And and that's her subject until the end. So you only have to just kind of look flick through a our book to see that that's her interest and it's a sustained interest at this time. Um So, >> and she kind of captures the interior world of these women. She's not just making portraits of women. She is She's giving you a sense that there is this interior life that you do not have access to. And I think that comes across in the interiors as well. And and you know, maybe that is something that um women that appeals to many many women that, you know, this idea of of having this interior world that is yours and it cannot be kind of imposed upon by the outside. >> Yeah, that's something we talked a lot about the kind of how these paintings function. So, they're both these sort of modernist Mont Sainte-Victoires um and they're also portraits of women, but she doesn't name the woman. There's a distance. The surface becomes a distance in the end. So, it's like keeping us away. >> I think it's right. >> We've got a question from online from David Wootton. He says an independent art historian on British art. And David asks, could the panel talk more about Gwen John in a European context, particularly in terms of her aesthetic relationship to Rilke, Rodin, and possibly Modersohn Becker? So, I don't know if you have thoughts on that kind of wider European network of artists and cultural figures. >> Rodin There are a lot of rapports in fact between Rodin's watercolors and her watercolors. Um which the exhibition doesn't go into. Rilke, I think, was important uh in terms of um >> [snorts] >> his um uh philosophy, his poetry. Um painters, that's more difficult. Um Uh well, um Anna in her essay talks about um Cézanne, Monet. Um And also, we know about Laura Mary Lawson, for example. She doesn't have And then obviously, there's Augustus John. He'll be an interesting one, I think if you put it if you had sort of flipped over postcards of Augustus John and Gwen John, and you didn't know who they were by, and you said woman or man, I think you would I think you would come to a you'd get 100% on those. Uh his his work does look masculine, and her her work does look feminine. Um but she's very much a one-off. Um I don't know how you feel. >> Yeah, one of the things that we wanted to do in the exhibition or in the books uh I mean, so because this is a solo exhibition, we don't have comparative works. And also, Alicia Foster has done such brilliant work in terms of situating Gwen John within kind of artistic networks in London and Paris. But what we do see through Anna's essay and I've looked at in in mine is that she was she was going to the Louvre when she was in London, she was going to the National Gallery, she was visiting exhibitions. In 1904, she described going to There was an exhibition of French medieval and Renaissance art that she describes as magnificent. So, the painting of the lady reading uh is based on a Virgin Mary by Jura, and it also draws on Annunciation imagery. So, she's taking from lots of different places, I think. Um And yeah, we've talked about Cézanne a lot, but I think Cézanne and Whistler are just kind of >> She doesn't have an artistic peer group, does she? She's not clubbable, I think, in Paris. >> She's not clubbable, no. She she doesn't have a a kind of social life around her practice. She is quite plugged into um this kind of women artists network. So, she did She, for instance, became friendly with Hilda Flodin, who was a Finnish artist. I might be pronouncing her surname wrong since she's Finnish. Um and uh who and they used to kind of go drawing together in the woods. They also are known to have had at least one kind of sexual encounter together. Um and there were other artists that many of whom she modeled for, many of whom she met through Rhoda. Um but that she was part of this network, but they didn't really become a group, you know, a social circle. She maintained very strong friendships with the artists that she met at the Slade, really. Yeah. >> Cuz that's how many artists in Paris in the '20s and '30s would have made a living. They would have formed little groups, sort of a sub-Cubist groups or Futurist groups or whatever. Um and Surrealist groups in the '20s and '30s, but she was never, apart from showing in the salons, she was never part of any uh separate group, which could provide which could build its own identity, which would also be a vehicle for commercial sales. >> I just I just I'm not sure if it's a question or a comment. Oh, sorry. Um but just going back to your question about [clears throat] why we prefer Gwen John. It seems to me that there is a bit of an elephant in the room when looking at all of her pictures of women, which is that if you do put them into a larger context, particularly a French context, but also a British context at the time, what are we looking at? We're looking at pictures by Philip Wilson Steer and Sargent, where women are decorative objects in fancy costumes basically. And when we look at what Picasso and Matisse are doing at the same time, we're looking and many, many other artists of course, too. We're looking at largely female nudes or women who are exposing their bodies in some sort of way. I mean, I personally don't agree with Lisa Tickner about Mont Sainte-Victoire. I think Cézanne is very important for her, but in different ways. In one way is that the the certainly the portraits of Madame Cézanne, which she did admire and know also know, um are very somber pictures of women. They are not decorative. They're they're simply they're very similar to the kinds of pictures that she did after 1910. And so, for me, it's always been because I'm not embarrassed. I'm not confronted by something that I don't want to see in a painting. And I'm not prudish. I'm not at all prudish, but I just kind of bored with all of that. So, that would be my answer. And you may, of course, disagree. That >> Really nice. >> Thank you. Um probably a very simple question, but why didn't she date her work? And was that expected or is it because she thought that no one would try to put them back in order posthumously? It's date her work? >> It's a good question, and I'm not sure that there is a a it's not a simple question. I'm not sure there is a simple answer to it. Um I perhaps I on one level, they wouldn't you know, it was difficult for her to, you know, dating a work means, you know, it's done. It's ready to go out in the world. And maybe there was an element of her not really wanting to release those works. Um but uh and and maybe because she did return to some of them and she certainly returned to the subjects. Um >> They're not signed, are they? >> They're not signed either. And I mean and and she she I mean we say she stopped dating her works, but she she rarely did put a date on them. I mean I don't know if she ever put a date on them. We know the dates of some of them because they were exhibited at the time, but it was just never a practice that she she entered into. >> But also this lots of the works in the exhibition are from our collection and and they stayed in at home. So they were you know, they're not titled or dated or signed because she never parted with them. >> [laughter] >> The journals, that's So what So that's one of the things that's been really great about having such a long time is being able to spend time reading um and there are you can kind of trace the development of what she's thinking about through the dates in the journals. There are some instances where I say some very very few, a couple of instances where she'll write a note and then a sketch and then I've matched up the sketch with one of the watercolors in our collection, which is nice cuz then you can date the watercolor to 1925 when it's not dated before. >> [snorts] >> I think one reason is that she didn't have a dealer. A dealer would often ask the This happened with Joan Eardley, for example. I've done some work on her. Uh and it's the dealer who'd want when they're submitted for an exhibition and to go in the catalog uh they want to make a list of them. Uh they want titles. They want um the signature in the corner. She didn't have a dealer, so didn't need to do that. >> I think also, sorry, just quickly, you know, what is interesting though is that she so later in her later in her life from 1926 she developed a a passion for a woman a fellow congregant at work um called Vera Umenzeff and uh she would write these very long um letters to this woman who eventually said, you know, this is getting too much. Can you not do that? And so instead every Monday she would give Vera a work uh a watercolor or a work on or a graphite drawing um and she always dated the she put the date that she'd given the work. So it she did sort of feel that dates had this kind of ceremony to them in a way that yeah, perhaps she didn't really need to to kind of have that ceremony if she wasn't exhibiting them. >> Hi, I just wanted to go back to the color theory that you mentioned because I was super intrigued by it. So um and I remember one of the paintings the color palette changed. So what kind of color theories was she into? Was there any particular change of her perception of the colors throughout the course of her career? Um yeah, any comments really I would love to hear. >> Thanks. Such brilliant questions. Thank you. That was really interesting. Fiona, do you want to know too on the spot? It was I'm aware that I've got experts in the room. So I think the thing to say about color is that she was reading color theory and that's fascinating. She So we've got an exercise book in the exhibition in which she's copying out um extracts from the French color theorist Chevreul who was the kind of most influential color theorist at the time. Um and we know that she was kind of interested in his theories. He was interested in how colors change in appearance, so our perception of color when they're placed side by side. Um which I think is interesting when you're thinking about complementary colors. Um and she also had a disc um which we haven't identified um and she writes about it in an a letter and we've got one of the discs in the exhibition, not hers, but we've borrowed a a Chevreul book um which kind of gives an example of the type of disc that she might have had. So, it's a book with his theories and it has a pop-out disc and I'm This is where I'm a bit embarrassed that um I kind of begun the job thinking that I would really understand the code and and and I don't. Um but she describes how this very complicated disc that had 85 >> 85,000 different combinations >> arrangements of colors um and she used it for um figuring out the complementary or successive color of every color or tone. Um >> The short answer is you should have a a chat with Fiona who over a drink afterwards. >> to be drinks afterwards and Fiona's written a essay in the book. Sorry to put you on the spot. It's just she talks so eloquently about this subject about Gwen John's use of color in the works on paper. Um but one of the things that I like is that it's it's both very technical um and I was saying that earlier, but also really suggestive and poetic and some of the notes in our collection, we've got some of my favorites and they're towards the end of the exhibition if you've been and they're just prim they're tiny drawings of primroses. Um [snorts] and they're very simple drawings. They're quite far towards the end of the PowerPoint. And on the reverse she writes um violet dress, green pinafore with yellow spots. So, often in her church studies, she uses kind of plant names or associations with the natural world. It's actually later than these ones, but here they are. They're in the showcase, tiny primroses. And um she's the violet dress, green pinafore with yellow spots is clearly what the picture is of when you look at it. And elsewhere, she'll she There's one that I like with a girl with a vermilion bow, a child in church. And she just writes, "Child with a vermilion bow on a gold ground, quiet happiness, a smile." So, I think that is linked to Rilke, some of these kind of poetic associations and and the way she talks about color. So, both both very um I think it sort of speaks to the I'm I'm interested in the fact that she is a kind of figurative artist, but her work is by no means simple or literal. Um it's often very kind of symbolic and poetic. >> Just at the end of that [clears throat] question, though. >> Yeah, yeah. >> [laughter] >> Great. >> I've been I No, no, I was in No, I'm not answering it. I'm I just The bit I would I wondered about, given you the dating issue, is there that distinct color shift? Cuz the way it's hanging our exhibition, you do suddenly go into this room of mulberry and purple and red. And do we think that there was that distinct color palette shift? Or you were suggesting perhaps it's to do with the sitter? >> Well, I think you know, I I I mean, I do think that there is a general move, you know, that she's definitely not using that kind of palette early in her career. So, yeah, there is a kind of general progression towards more colorful palette. But I do think you're right that actually it's not a sudden shift because some of the works of the convalescent model, so for instance, there's a work that is called The Pilgrim. We have one and then National Galleries of Scotland I'm pointing to you, but you're not that. But anyway, you were that. Um have another version of it and those works are we think probably quite late in the series of works of the convalescent model. So, probably mid-1920s. So, she's probably doing the Mulberry Dress series and the convalescent model sort of at the same time, but she's using quite different palettes and yeah. >> Just I was quite I keep on being quite struck by that one of the last letters to Osbert Sitwell where she sets out that list of colors where we don't know if she's painting at all anymore, but how out of 15 of them 11 or so were either pink, purple, or red. And so, I did wonder if they Yes, if that's sort of there is a trajectory towards that. >> note where she writes which I I you know, lots of this is kind of piecing together with the evidence that you have, but she writes in 1923 painters you do your drawings. And I do think that, you know, this starts at this time to work with this model and use these kind of Mulberry colors is interesting. >> I think it is 7:00 and I gather there are Am I correct in thinking there are drinks? >> There most certainly are. >> Excellent. Um >> Beautiful time keeping. >> Can we finish then by thanking um Rachel and Lucy for an amazing exhibition as well as [applause] talk. >> And thank you to the Paul Mellon Centre. Thank you. Thank you so much, panelists. Rachel, Lucy, and Patrick, it was such a revealing and generous discussion. I always just love hearing the research and the work behind an exhibition and it's it's such a testament to all your hard work because it's it's such an amazing event, and I look forward to seeing it in another iteration. Hopefully, get up to Edinburgh this summer. It's a really good excuse to to travel and and go and see the show in another another format. So, the center's open till 7:30 this evening. We encourage you to come and have a drink with us for more conversation with the panelists and together and have a bit of refreshment before