The Nun

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.

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.

c. 1913

Received into the Catholic Church

As her affair with Rodin drew to a close she sought comfort in Roman Catholicism and around 1913 was received into the Church; her notebooks of the period include meditations and prayers, and her desire to be “God’s little artist” and to “become a saint”.

1926

Her only solo exhibition in her lifetime

Her only solo exhibition in her lifetime was held in 1926 at the New Chenil Galleries in London.

18 September 1939

Died