39. GWEN JOHN - A SPACE BETWEEN WONDER AND WANDERING.

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris. The Holburne Museum, BATH.

Gwen John, ‘The Convalescent’, c.1923, Oil on canvas, The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Swept up and flushed in watercolor blush - lapsing into a swathe of cream paper - to retrace a moment of gesture shared between two - the model and the artist - the artist and the artist - yet inscribed for another, the collector and benefactor. 

Rodin's brilliance in capturing charged transience crackles with a thunder unheard yet felt - an electrical currency that leaps a hip-notic landscape with a caress that condemns the inquiry of line to probable fatality. With each ​erogenous, ergonomic line - recorded through observation - tender​ in ​tracery -​ nuzzle the page with graphite grazes - as the gaze of a viewer ​discovers Gwen John. - An exposed intimacy in suspension - whispers and devastates. 

Gwen John, Study for ‘The Brown Teapot’ about 1915-16. Oil on Canvas.

Burnt and raw, blunt paint strokes chip away the surface - an image sculpted with planes of light as if the foreground is faceted - out of focus while the viewers' gaze is lost in the background - the mid-tone tawny atmosphere of a time in the day where emptiness feels full (where adults work, children learn and the streets below are still) - where the light feels distracted - where the eye settles as if listening to the distant murmurings of a conversation in another room ...

The loaner in Gwen John - perpetual afternoon light and the tertiary shadow shades of a season in passing - lost and yet not found - where day follows day and night never falls.
The autumn's melancholic return with melodic purrs, fading in and out of consciousness in that specific way that Paris offers to those who still believe.

An impression - the listening and translated atmospheres felt with eyes open and doors closed - remembering a monochrome past - ebbing into a present still damp on the page - cautiously rendered as if moving forward in borrowed boots across powdered snow. 

The instinct to express with the exhausted colours of a storm still on the horizon - a horizon of acceptance, glistening as if in a state of precipitation - leaving every surface mirrored into puddled emotions - pooling into ripples - the dérive abandonings and liberated wonderings of waiting for the rain to pass before choosing to succumb to a legacy drowned in grays.

Auguste Rodin, Nude woman lying on her back; arm raised and head hidden by drapery. c.1900. Graphite, with watercolour. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris. The Holburne Museum BATH - until 14 April 2024.