Gwen John #1 – Whistler’s Influence

Posted: September 9th, 2026 | No Comments »

A visit to Modern 2 in Edinburgh and the Gwen John exhibition, Strange Beauties (until 4/1/27).

John (1876-1939), the sister of Augustus John , studied at the Slade under Henry Tonks and then under Whistler in Paris. I wrote recently about Whistler’s appreciation of Chinese objets and Japanese art for the South China Morning Post reviewing the Whistler retrospective at London’s Tate (which ends incidentally on September 27). Click here to read.

John adopted Whistler’s appreciation of Japanese art and attempted to replicate it making her sketches, ‘definite and clean like Japanese drawings.’ Here, as an example given in the M2 exhibition, is “Self Portrait, Nude”, Sketching, graphite pencil on paper from c.1910

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