The Latest Breaking News from Gwen John

Looking for something to do this Summer? Our experts have gone to some of the best exhibitions around the UK and given us their take on it. From retrospectives of painter Peter Howson’s work in Edinburgh and filmmaker Brian Desmond Hurst’s work in Belfast to a groundbreaking photography exhibition in…

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