The Quiet Intensity of Gwen John's Painting

Gwen John dedicated her life to depicting women in interior spaces. Although associated with the Camden Town and Bloomsbury groups in London and the School of Paris in France, John was a private person who preferred her own space and company. Her paintings often depict her own lodgings.

This work is one of a number of self portraits John executed while living in Montparnasse, in Paris, where she moved in 1904. John represents herself as a contemplative but industrious female figure in modest Victorian attire.

Beside her in the otherwise sparse room, is a wicker chair on which her beloved cat is curled up. Both the chair and the cat appear in many other of John's paintings from this period. The quiet companionship offered by the cat reinforces the stillness of the scene.

John's painterly technique was as measured as her choice of subjects. The thin layers of dry, chalky paint result in a distressed surface texture that gives the painting a fragile quality. The brush marks are applied with deliberate control and her attention to colour is similarly contained, rarely deviating from the muted pastel palette visible here.

The intensity of the interior scene is relieved by the open window from which light pours in, silhouetting the female figure. This draws the viewer's eye into the distance, where another room is visible across the courtyard. This vista into the unknown ruptures the stifling tension built up in the foreground.