In 1942, at the height of his fame, Augustus John predicted that 'fifty years from now I shall be known as the brother of Gwen John'. Gwen John (1876
- 1939) is indeed now recognised as a great artistic innovator, yet for years her life remained shrouded in the myth of the solitary recluse. Born in Pembrokeshire, Gwen followed her brother to the Slade. Her future was bound up with Augustus, his women & his coteries, yet she was also daring & highly original, living determinedly in her own way. Defiant yet shy, she painted & modelled amid the Bohemian circles of early twentieth-century Paris & embarked on a long, intense love affair with France's most legendary artistic figure, the sculptor Rodin. A friend of Symbolist poets & post-Impressionist painters, later she turned increasingly to religion, achieving a deep serenity which masked her inner turbulence, creating her haunting paintings
- delicate, austere, restrained & still. Based on her lively & passionate unpublished letters & copiously illustrated, this vivid new biography challenges our prejudices about the ways we evaluate women artists & finally uncovers the life of this ardent & complicated personality, one of the finest artists of her day.