Gwen John

Acquired by Wilfrid A. Evill June 1948 for £160.0.0, by whom bequeathed to Honor Frost in 1963

Hampstead, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Catalogue of the Greater Portion of a Collection of Modern English Paintings, Water Colours, Drawings and Sculpture Belonging to W. A. Evill, March 1955, cat. no.110;
London, The Home of Wilfrid A. Evill, Contemporary Art Society, Pictures, Drawings, Water Colours and Sculpture, April - May 1961, (part II- section 2) cat. no.8;
Brighton, Brighton Art Gallery, The Wilfrid Evill Memorial Exhibition, June - August 1965, cat. no.76.

Cecily Langdale, Gwen John, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1987, cat. no.76, illustrated pl.139, p.93.

The colours are much fresher than the catalogue illustration suggests. Original canvas. There are a few areas of craquelure, mainly to spots in the background. There is a further area of craquelure to the girl's hands and book, with a few flecks of old paint loss. The surface has recently been cleaned. Ultraviolet light reveals no apparent signs of retouching. Held in a painted and gilt plaster frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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The present work belongs to series of related paintings from the mid-1910s to the early 1920s, considered the maturation of Gwen John's oeuvre. Within this period, nearly all John's paintings are female portraits of an unknown sitter, referred to as the 'convalescent' model. Some fifty images of her exist with only subtle variations upon the theme: a young woman in a blue or grey dress in two-third or three-quarter length profile, a pyramidal body, her expression impassive, behind her a plain background or the simplified interior of her studio in the rue Terre Neuve. Her hands are large, and either rest heavy in her lap, or she holds a piece of fabric, a black cat or, as in the present work, a book.

These enigmatic portraits are viewed as some of her finest and most original works. The reason for the repetition is not explicit, but the subject undoubtedly served as a vehicle for John to explore her primary concern: the formal aspects of painting. They are not an exercise in portraiture in the conventional sense - they are not commissioned, the sitter is unknown and they do not convey an overwhelming concern with character. Rather, in the subtle variations of tone, colour, texture and arrangement, they reveal a typically modernist engagement with the process of picture-making.

In Portrait of a Girl, superfluous details are stripped from the scene, the background reduced to a geometric abstraction. Emphasis is thus placed on form and mood. The applied paint is thick and chalky, leaving a wonderfully dry, textured surface. Muted blues, greys and pinks are closely graded with the occasional accent of colour, and the sense of light and space is achieved through these tonal variations. This careful modulation, the soft colours and broken surface dissolves the figure into her surroundings and strengthens the overall sense of harmony.

In the application of paint, the figure's proportions, simple pose and John's detached approach to her, the influence of Cézanne, like many of her contemporaries, has been recognised. The end result, however, remains distinctly John's. The balance of colour and form, the still pose and soft features convey an alluringly meditative atmosphere. It compels one to pause and reflect; to contemplate a single moment, unremarkable on the surface, which John has imbued with radiance and rendered beautiful.