Welsh 1876-1939 Gwen John was born in Haverfordwest, Wales, the second of four children of Edwin William John and his wife Augusta (nee Smith). Edwin John was a solicitor whose dour temperament cast a chill over his family, and Augusta was often absent from the children due to ill health, leaving her two sisters??stern Salvationists??to take her place in the household. Despite the considerable tension in the family (who became known as "those turbulent Johns") the children's interest in literature and art was encouraged. Following the mother??s premature death in 1884, the family moved to Tenby in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Although she painted and drew from an early age, her earliest surviving work dates from her nineteenth year. From 1895?C98, she studied at the Slade School of Art, where her younger brother, Augustus John, had begun his studies in 1894. During this period they shared living quarters, and further reduced their expenses by subsisting on a diet of nuts and fruit. Even as a student, Augustus' brilliant draughtsmanship and personal glamour made him a celebrity, and stood in contrast to Gwen's quieter gifts and reticent demeanour. While he greatly admired her art, Augustus offered her advice which she ignored; he urged her to take a "more athletic attitude to life", and cautioned her against what he saw as the "unbecoming and unhygienic negligence" of her mode of living, but her entire life was marked by a disregard for her physical well-being. In 1898 she made her first visit to Paris with two friends from the Slade, and while there she studied under James McNeill Whistler at the Academie Carmen. She returned to London in 1899, and spent the next four years in austere circumstances. When she exhibited her work for the first time in 1900, at the New English Art Club (NEAC), her address was a derelict building where she was living illegally.  Related Paintings of Gwen John :. | Self-Portrait | Napoleon Blair made plague in the house | The Precious Book | the artist in her room in paris | The Convalescent |
Related Artists:
William Sawrey Gilpin
William Sawrey Gilpin (1762-1843)
Frederick spencer gore
British. 1878 - 1914. English painter. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London (1896-9), where he met Harold Gilman, who became a close friend. In 1902 he visited Spain with another Slade contemporary, Wyndham Lewis, and two years later he visited Sickert in Dieppe. From that time on his work was influenced by French art, and Gore learnt much about Degas's paintings through Sickert's teaching. After Sickert's return to London in 1905 Gore frequently accompanied him to music halls and made them the subject of several paintings, for example The Mad Pierrot Ballet, the Alhambra
skagen museum