Masterpiece Story: Girl in a Blue Dress by Gwen John

Let us take a closer look at Girl in a Blue Dress from 1914–1915. This portrait was purchased by the Amgueddfa Cymru—Museum Wales in 1935 for £20. Gwen John was thrilled at this, saying that she had a “very chic” letter from the museum director. The letter is shown above.

Painting Techniques

From the mid-1910s, around the time of this painting, Gwen John’s portrait technique changed significantly. Her use of paint became dry and sparing, with visible brush strokes. No varnish is used. See how the woman and the background blend together. The most unusual discovery of her work at this time is that Gwen John would often paint from the edges of the canvas, with no preparatory sketches. The spatial awareness and artistic skill required for this are astonishing.

Texture

To create a textured surface for her canvas, Gwen John would mix warm animal glue and chalk. Oil paint layers in pinks, greys, blues, and ochres were applied very thinly and dryly. The effect is almost like a wall-painted fresco. Museum Wales has looked in detail at this painting. In the image above, when a light is shone from the side, the uneven, textured canvas is apparent. And with a light shining from behind (image below), we see how little paint has been used.

As Neil Lebeter, senior curator, said in the museum’s online blog on June 9, 2020: “This highlights John’s skill to produce a work so affecting without really using any paint at all, there’s barely anything there.”

Repetition

Women, children, and nature—this is essentially what Gwen John painted. And boy, did she paint! John returns again and again to the same symbolic images. We have 60 paintings like this one—a lone woman, three-quarter length, seated in a room, self-contained and thoughtful. Paintings like Seated Woman, The Convalescent, Girl in Mulberry Dress, and The Pilgrim return again and again to essential forms, experimenting, refining, and distilling a theme. Gwen John sought meaning with close, attentive looking.

Anonymous

The woman in this painting is a neighbor, from the time when Gwen John moved to Meudon, a quiet suburb on the edge of Paris. The identity of the woman (the artist’s most frequently used model) remains a mystery; her name was never recorded in the artist’s correspondence or in her papers. This young, globally recognized, and celebrated figure is simply “a neighbor.” This strange fact fits so well with Gwen John’s desire to explore form and space, composition and color, and the interiority of the female mind, rather than presenting a unique likeness or particular personality. The exact nature of the individual remains elusive.

Presence

This is a quiet scene, and yet, to spend time with it, you feel that it is charged with meaning and feeling. Gazing into one of Gwen John’s paintings of women, we get a real sense of stillness, but this is not passive; the viewer feels somehow connected. The Girl in a Blue Dress sits still and quiet. She looks out, but not at us. She is absorbed in internal reverie. The wall behind her is simply a tonal background; the figure itself is poised and monumental.

Seer of Strange Beauties

How do you present the inner life of a woman to a world that so often is not particularly interested? How do you say so much with just the basics of a body, a chair, and sparse, subtle use of paint and color? Girl in a Blue Dress is the honest portrayal of a woman without performance. Gwen John sweeps aside ideas of how to look at women. Her sitters are symbolic and poetic yet also ordinary and everyday. She paints women reading, learning, writing, and thinking. Women with integrity and luminous presence.

P.S. You can find Gwen John’s painting in our Women Artists Postcards Set, featuring works by the amazing female artists.