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Lot Essay
Woman with Hands Crossed is described in the Quinn sale catalogue: 'Three quarter length seated resigned figure, facing slightly to the left; wearing a dark grey dress. Neutral background' (see C. Langdale, op. cit. p. 173).
The American collector, John Quinn, amassed a large collection of British, Irish and French art, mostly purchased directly from the artists. Quinn was a successful New York corporate lawyer and had initially concentrated his collection on Irish writers and painters before broadening his interests. He met Gwen's brother, Augustus, in 1909, who then recommended several British artists to him, including the work of his sister. This introduction sparked a lifelong relationship between Quinn, patron and collector, and Gwen, and he purchased a number of her works and freed her somewhat from financial worry (see F. Watson, loc. cit. for a list of Gwen John works in the John Quinn Collection).
Alicia Foster comments, 'From the Mère Poussepin series of the 1910s until the end of her career, the majority of Gwen John's paintings are portraits of women and of girls, painted using a similar technique, and arranged in variations of the same pose. They are constructed in a pattern of close tones, and represented approximately three-quarter-length and sitting in a room. The interior is usually indicated by no more than a geometric tonal arrangement suggesting a corner with a window, or a wall against which the model is placed. The figures are monumental. Their dress, often a block of one colour, and their simply arranged hair, adds to the weight of their presence which is also sometimes emphasised by the artist's distortion of the size of their hands or heads, or the length of their bodies. They sit, calm and impassive, in the centre of the canvas' (see A. Foster, Gwen John, London, 1999, p. 65).
'From about 1923, distinct changes occur in Gwen John's paintings. The palette has a new mauvish cast, and the range of values has broadened, and the contrasts between light and dark have strengthened. Paint is more boldly and spontaneously dragged onto the canvas ... The subject is the same - figures of women - but those figures have altered. Their outlines are jagged sharply etched against the backgrounds. The bodies are slenderer, the hands bonier, the faces more stylised: the high-set eyes and knife-edge noses are heiroglyphs of features. In placement and proportion, these figures are stikingly like those in Amedeo Modigliani's paintings of the late 1910s. Even the eccentric proportions of the heads are like his (proportions for which he was indebted to African masks). Gwen John never discussed Modigliani but she certainly knew his work and perhaps even the man himself. He was a friend of Augustus, who owned two of his sculptures' (see D. Fraser Jenkins and C. Stephens (eds.), op. cit., p. 178).
The unidentified sitter in this portrait also posed for other paintings including Unfinished Study of a Nude Girl, Seated (Langdale no. 129), Study of a Seated Nude Girl (Langdale no. 130) and Unfinished Portrait of a Seated Girl (Langdale no. 130A).
The American collector, John Quinn, amassed a large collection of British, Irish and French art, mostly purchased directly from the artists. Quinn was a successful New York corporate lawyer and had initially concentrated his collection on Irish writers and painters before broadening his interests. He met Gwen's brother, Augustus, in 1909, who then recommended several British artists to him, including the work of his sister. This introduction sparked a lifelong relationship between Quinn, patron and collector, and Gwen, and he purchased a number of her works and freed her somewhat from financial worry (see F. Watson, loc. cit. for a list of Gwen John works in the John Quinn Collection).
Alicia Foster comments, 'From the Mère Poussepin series of the 1910s until the end of her career, the majority of Gwen John's paintings are portraits of women and of girls, painted using a similar technique, and arranged in variations of the same pose. They are constructed in a pattern of close tones, and represented approximately three-quarter-length and sitting in a room. The interior is usually indicated by no more than a geometric tonal arrangement suggesting a corner with a window, or a wall against which the model is placed. The figures are monumental. Their dress, often a block of one colour, and their simply arranged hair, adds to the weight of their presence which is also sometimes emphasised by the artist's distortion of the size of their hands or heads, or the length of their bodies. They sit, calm and impassive, in the centre of the canvas' (see A. Foster, Gwen John, London, 1999, p. 65).
'From about 1923, distinct changes occur in Gwen John's paintings. The palette has a new mauvish cast, and the range of values has broadened, and the contrasts between light and dark have strengthened. Paint is more boldly and spontaneously dragged onto the canvas ... The subject is the same - figures of women - but those figures have altered. Their outlines are jagged sharply etched against the backgrounds. The bodies are slenderer, the hands bonier, the faces more stylised: the high-set eyes and knife-edge noses are heiroglyphs of features. In placement and proportion, these figures are stikingly like those in Amedeo Modigliani's paintings of the late 1910s. Even the eccentric proportions of the heads are like his (proportions for which he was indebted to African masks). Gwen John never discussed Modigliani but she certainly knew his work and perhaps even the man himself. He was a friend of Augustus, who owned two of his sculptures' (see D. Fraser Jenkins and C. Stephens (eds.), op. cit., p. 178).
The unidentified sitter in this portrait also posed for other paintings including Unfinished Study of a Nude Girl, Seated (Langdale no. 129), Study of a Seated Nude Girl (Langdale no. 130) and Unfinished Portrait of a Seated Girl (Langdale no. 130A).