The Latest Breaking News from Gwen John

The quiet Welsh painter Gwen John was not like any other artist, male or female – she was genuinely unique. She was neither an heiress, like most unmarried modernist women, nor a conventional academic artist, like most women who had to make a living with their art.

The Welsh-born painter Gwen John is generally remembered as a “fragile”, isolated figure, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Neglected for some time after her death, John (1876-1939) was rediscovered in the 1980s, when she was reassessed as a reclusive talent overshadowed by two “bombastic male egos”: her brother, the…

Flawed, preoccupied and animated, Donachie’s vivid portraits intrigue and charm in a lively exhibition; Gwen John feels anaemic by comparison

Tensile and hard-won, the artist’s singular work is occasionally lost in the scrum of a show keen to situate her in a social, sexual and painterly whirl