The exhibition will consist of twenty-five works on paper, all of which have just been released from the artist’s estate and have never been previously shown. They include gouaches of women and children in church, drawings of the poet and critic Arthur Symons and of the artist’s friend Chloe Boughton-Leigh, images of peasant boys and girls, watercolors of cats, still lifes, and landscapes.
Gwen John (1876 – 1939) is one of the foremost British artists of the twentieth century. Born in Wales, she was the sister of the also famous Augustus John. After studying at the Slade School in London, she moved to France in 1903 and spent her the remainder of her life there. Her work is known for its subdued color and modest compositions that mask a deep emotional resonance. During her lifetime, the celebrated collector John Quinn (1870 –1924) was her patron; after her death her reputation grew steadily, and her work is represented in virtually every major museum in Britain, including the Tate Gallery, London; the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. In America, her pictures are in such public collections as the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Art Institute of Chicago; and both the Yale Art Gallery and the British Art Center, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. The first American exhibition of her pictures in 1965 was held at Davis Galleries, which later became Davis & Langdale Company.
She and her brother were subjects of the show Augustus John and Gwen John at Tate Britain, London, 2004, which Cecily Langdale, partner in Davis & Langdale Company, co-curated. Langdale is the author of Gwen John: with a Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings and a Selection of the Drawings, published by Yale University Press in 1987.