Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris. Pallant House Gallery

Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester presents more than 120 works that challenge the myth and re-examine the significance of John's work alongside her fellow international modernists. Since she died in 1939, John's importance was overshadowed by her brother, Augustus, and the sculptor Auguste Rodin, for whom she modeled in Paris during their ten-year affair. The exhibition proposes her work on a widening scope, positioning her among a range of European contemporaries, such as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and painters with whom the exhibition pairs her work: Édouard Vuillard, James McNeill Whistler, and Walter Sickert.
Stephen Deuchar mentioned in Gwen John and Augustus John, published in 2005 for Tate's exhibition catalog: 'While Gwen John's beautiful later oil paintings have come to be more generally admired - as can be seen from the range of lenders of this exhibition - a liking for her brother's art has diminished.' Susan Chitty was the first published biographer of Gwen John in 1981 before some scholars were interested. She explained that her brother Augustus was ambivalent; he wanted people to write about her, but then he wanted to be the one to do it, but he never did. He aimed to control her history.
The exhibition features paintings, watercolors, and drawings spanning John's career (the 1890s-1939), from her time at London's Slade School of Fine Art (one of the few art schools that were accepting women on the same terms as men) and her relocation to Paris to works produced in Meudon, where she spent the last years of her life.