late 1903
Leaves for France with Dorelia McNeill
In late 1903 she travelled to France with her friend Dorelia McNeill, Augustus John’s lover, whose daughter Vivien would also become an artist. Landing in Bordeaux, they set off on foot, intending to reach Rome, sleeping in fields and living on money earned by selling portrait sketches, but made it only as far as Toulouse; when she first arrived in France Gwen lived in poverty, on a diet of mostly figs and bread.
1904
Begins modelling for Rodin and becomes his lover
In that same year she began modelling for the sculptor Auguste Rodin and became his lover after being introduced by Hilda Flodin. Rodin used her as the model for a muse in his unfinished monument to Whistler.
1904
Moves to Paris and works as an artist’s model
In 1904 the two went to Paris, where Gwen found work as an artist’s model, mostly for women artists. During her years in Paris she met Matisse, Picasso, Brâncuși and Rilke, but the new developments in the art of her time had little effect on her, and she worked in solitude.
1904–1914
Ten years of devotion to Rodin: thousands of letters
Her devotion to Rodin, the most famous artist of his time and 35 years older than her, continued unabated for the next ten years, as documented in her thousands of fervent letters to him. Given to fierce attachments to both men and women that were sometimes disturbing to them, she was eventually kept at a distance by Rodin, despite his genuine feeling for her, through the use of concierges and secretaries.
1910
Her patron John Quinn begins buying her work
The American collector John Quinn, from 1910 until his death in 1924, purchased the majority of the works that Gwen John sold; his support freed her from having to work as a model and enabled her to devote herself to her work. He also helped to organise the 1913 Armory Show in New York, in which one of her paintings was included.
1910
Moves to Meudon
In 1910 she found living quarters in Meudon, a suburb of Paris, where she would remain for the rest of her life. In the same year she made the only two etchings known by her.