Amazon.com
Her brother Augustus is better known today, but in the early decades of the 20th century Gwen John (1876-1939) was equally, if not more, respected as a painter (and not just as model and muse to her lover Rodin). Particularly in Paris, where she made her home, and in New York, where she was represented by pioneering art dealer John Quinn, she was acclaimed for the sureness of her technique and the haunting psychological penetration with which she captured the inner lives of her subjects. Drawing on her letters and journals, novelist and poet Sue Roe is able to chronicle the evolution of John's artistic, emotional, and spiritual strivings in fascinating detail. Rodin encouraged her work, but Roe perceptively notes that John's passionate desire to submit to the sculptor warred with her "profound sense of independence [and] need to access and control her own muse." She was sustained by a series of intimate friendships with other women (including her brother's wife and mistress), as well as a burgeoning Catholic faith. Far from being the eccentric recluse of posthumous legend, John exhibited and sold her work regularly and had an active social life. The stillness and harmony of her work, Roe convincingly argues, were the product of enormous self-discipline and restraint imposed on a turbulent psyche. This sensitive, sympathetic biography arouses our admiration and awe for a woman who "lived uniquely, with dedication and daring." --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
British novelist, poet and critic Roe (Estella) offers a biography of the painter John (1876-1939), who focused on Whistler-like portraits and spent some time as mistress to the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Once undervalued because of the celebrity of her now-neglected painter brother Augustus John (1878-1961), Gwen John is an utterly British subject in her lifelong shyness and reticence, yet offers a welcome alternative for Brit-o-phile readers weary of the Bloomsbury circle (Roe's Writing and Gender: Virginia Woolf's Writing Practice among the plethora of titles). This new book tells more than most readers will want to know about degrees of feeling in John's relationship with Rodin and her emotions when she loses her cat, Quinet. Despite the book's subtitle, there is mostly vague and generalized analysis of the paintings themselves: "...her work gained a strong, fluid sense of immediacy and an intimacy between artist and subject," is a typical assay. The many women Johns painted reveal some interesting psychological states, including bleary depression, sexual repression and clear excitement sometimes all in the same image. But Roe gets too caught up in landlords' bills and the like, and fails to focus clearly on John's highest achievements (shown in 16 pages of b&w and color images). As a modern woman artist, Johns had a life about one-tenth as interesting as that of contemporaries like Mina Loy, but this recognition of her contribution should at least restore her to the era's artistic ferment.
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