Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Four stars
When Gwen John (1876-1939) wrote how ‘A beautiful life is one led, perhaps, in the shadow, but ordered, regular, harmonious’ it was a self aware summation of her own quiet devotions, both in life and work.
The Edinburgh leg of this major exhibition in partnership with Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales in Cardiff prior to dates at Yale Center for British Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC, marks the 150thanniversary of John’s birth. It brings together more than 200 of her paintings, contextualised here in such a way as to reveal the connections, repetitions and variations pursued by John with an understated but passionate intensity.
This runs throughout her portraits of unsmiling women, her beloved cat, and the nuns she looked to after converting to Catholicism. With each set lined up in groups, one can play a game of spot the difference with the same enigmatic subjects posed against increasingly austere backdrops. There is mystery too in John’s depictions of the rooms she lived in after moving to France, each accoutrement offering a tantalising glimpse of the life lived there.
For all her insularity, John opened a door for other women artists even as she pursued her singular vision in a room of her own.
Modern Two until 4 January 2027
The List, August 2026
ends
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