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Descriptif du lot
Still, contained and quietly absorbing, A Sitting Girl Wearing a Spotted Blue Dress belongs to the first group of paintings Gwen John devoted to the young woman who would become her most enduring subject. Painted in circa 1914-15, it is one of eight known versions of the composition. Together, they open a sequence that would run to more than sixty canvases over the following years. A young woman is seated alone in a plain interior, her hands at rest and her gaze lowered. Nothing in the room competes for attention. The picture’s mood is one of profound calm, a serenity John achieves as much through the means of painting as through her choice of subject.
Much has been made of John’s apparent seclusion, the unmarried artist living alone in her attic room in Meudon, painting pensive women in silent rooms. Yet the paintings themselves invite another reading. The women John painted are seen apart from the roles of daughter, sister or wife that so often defined female sitters in portraiture of the period. They are reflective and inward, shown on their own terms, and in this sense they are distinctly modern. John’s own life, lived independently in France and dedicated to her work, reflected the same stillness. John’s life has been overshadowed by the male artists around her, notably her brother and the sculptor Auguste Rodin, with whom she had an intense love affair. Yet they rarely appear in her paintings, which instead draw upon her female coterie as subjects. Having travelled on foot across France with her friend Dorothy ‘Dorelia’ McNeill, and enjoying close friendships with artists such as Mary Constance Lloyd and Ursula Tyrwhitt, John’s move to Meudon served to extend her female circle.
For John, this female figure was less the subject of a likeness than the means of pursuing what she called the “problems of painting”. Although John painted this woman more often than any other model, she referred to her only as “a Meudon neighbour”. Returning to the same composition again and again, she made small, deliberate adjustments to the sitter’s hair, dress and accessories. She weighed the geometry of forms within the picture space and the delicate relationship between surface and depth. The practice of working in series aligns John with the most searching modernists of her generation. Her hair and blue dress are arranged simply; the palette is limited to the blue of her dress, the pink tones of her hands and face, and the brown of her hair and background. One might ask how, in a time of such great upheaval, a portrait as subtle as this might have been created.
In the present work, the feeling of patience is profound. The light is evenly diffused rather than cast from a single light source, so that no dramatic shadow disturbs the stillness of the room. The palette is muted; the blue of the dress renders a quiet intensity against the soft browns of the interior, the scattered spots on the sitter’s dress enlivening the surface without disrupting the quiet space. The figure is placed with great care, settled firmly within the frame, so that the composition feels at once intimate and monumental. Moreover, it is John’s painterly technique that is so important. The paint is laid down so dryly and so evenly that the figure and background share precisely the same chalky texture.
This painting was exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries in 1924, a yearly art exhibition established in opposition to the traditional and official Academy Salon system, which quickly became an important venue for modern French and international artists. In A Sitting Girl Wearing a Spotted Blue Dress, John suggests an inner life whose depth can be sensed but never fully measured. It is a fitting emblem of an artist who found in restraint her most eloquent means of expression.
Much has been made of John’s apparent seclusion, the unmarried artist living alone in her attic room in Meudon, painting pensive women in silent rooms. Yet the paintings themselves invite another reading. The women John painted are seen apart from the roles of daughter, sister or wife that so often defined female sitters in portraiture of the period. They are reflective and inward, shown on their own terms, and in this sense they are distinctly modern. John’s own life, lived independently in France and dedicated to her work, reflected the same stillness. John’s life has been overshadowed by the male artists around her, notably her brother and the sculptor Auguste Rodin, with whom she had an intense love affair. Yet they rarely appear in her paintings, which instead draw upon her female coterie as subjects. Having travelled on foot across France with her friend Dorothy ‘Dorelia’ McNeill, and enjoying close friendships with artists such as Mary Constance Lloyd and Ursula Tyrwhitt, John’s move to Meudon served to extend her female circle.
For John, this female figure was less the subject of a likeness than the means of pursuing what she called the “problems of painting”. Although John painted this woman more often than any other model, she referred to her only as “a Meudon neighbour”. Returning to the same composition again and again, she made small, deliberate adjustments to the sitter’s hair, dress and accessories. She weighed the geometry of forms within the picture space and the delicate relationship between surface and depth. The practice of working in series aligns John with the most searching modernists of her generation. Her hair and blue dress are arranged simply; the palette is limited to the blue of her dress, the pink tones of her hands and face, and the brown of her hair and background. One might ask how, in a time of such great upheaval, a portrait as subtle as this might have been created.
In the present work, the feeling of patience is profound. The light is evenly diffused rather than cast from a single light source, so that no dramatic shadow disturbs the stillness of the room. The palette is muted; the blue of the dress renders a quiet intensity against the soft browns of the interior, the scattered spots on the sitter’s dress enlivening the surface without disrupting the quiet space. The figure is placed with great care, settled firmly within the frame, so that the composition feels at once intimate and monumental. Moreover, it is John’s painterly technique that is so important. The paint is laid down so dryly and so evenly that the figure and background share precisely the same chalky texture.
This painting was exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries in 1924, a yearly art exhibition established in opposition to the traditional and official Academy Salon system, which quickly became an important venue for modern French and international artists. In A Sitting Girl Wearing a Spotted Blue Dress, John suggests an inner life whose depth can be sensed but never fully measured. It is a fitting emblem of an artist who found in restraint her most eloquent means of expression.