After Gwen John (1876 - 1939).In 1898, Gwen left England for Paris, which was to be her home for the rest of her life. She studied with James McNeil Whistler, who claimed not to be teaching art, but the "scientific application of paints and brushes". He was an important master for Gwen. She worked slowly and obsessively, repeating motifs again and again and yet she was convinced of the importance of spontaneity. In 1904 she became the model of the French sculptor Rodin and later his lover. She was obsessive in her behavior toward him as she was in her painting. He found her passion worrying and exhausting; she was twenty-eight, he was sixty-three. In 1913 she converted to Catholicism; this period of passionate sexual love and passionate religiousity was also a time of great artistic growth. She moved to Meudon, a suburb of Paris, and began a long connection with a group of Dominican sisters. Although she rarely exhibited, when she did it was at prestigious salons. Her later work for all its soft-edged sensuality, seems touched by the iconography of sacred art. But she did not come to a good end; in 1928, at the age of fifty-two, she developed an unrequited passion for a devout woman named Vera Oumancoff. Gwen moved to a shed behind the house where she had once lived. She lost her faith and her desire to paint, and eventually neglected herself, failing to bathe and change her clothes and nearly starving herself. She died alone in 1939, at a public hospital in Dieppe. Her brother Augustus meant to mark the grave, but it slipped his mind; no one is sure where she is buried. Sources include: Born to Love by Mary Gordon in Art and Antiques, April 1992 Pencil and ink on paper. Measure 10 "in H x 8" in W.

Good condition