Gwen John

We should dare to follow him in his trajectory.

Separated by many decades, Gwen John's young woman doesn't seem to belong to an official religion, but if there was one dedicated to the appreciation of solitude, then she would be one of its saintly and legendary figures.

Her expression, kind, gentle, melancholy, is an advertisement for all that the modern world has neglected in its promotion of active, cheery lives.

Isolation isn't a particular curse.

You're listening to Exhibiting Faith, a podcast about the intersection of art and faith.

I'm David Trigg and this episode explores the work of Gwen John.

Celebrated for her quietly intense paintings of domestic interiors and solitary female figures, John is recognised as one of the finest Welsh artists of the early 20th century.

From the moment she left her home in Tenby, John pursued a fiercely independent course, first in London and then in Paris, where she lived until the end of her life.

Her conversion to Catholicism around 1913 had a profound effect on her art, evident both in her choice of subjects and the evolution of her style.

For John, art making became a spiritual practice and by the early 1920s she was referring to herself as God's little artist.

Marking the 150th anniversary of Gwen John's birth is the ambitious international touring exhibition, Gwen John Strange Beauties, which opened at National Museum Cardiff earlier this year and is now on display at National Gallery Scotland in Edinburgh.

Bringing together well-known paintings with rarely seen works on paper, the exhibition demonstrates how John's faith became deeply entwined with her practice.

Exactly.

Philip, I was at the Gwen John exhibition recently in the National Galleries in Scotland and I noticed that only certain paintings had a rope going forcing the audience to be a certain distance.

They were all from the Yale Mellon Centre for British Art.

And I presume that was a condition set by the lenders.