BIRMINGHAM.- What made British artist Gwen John carry out no fewer than eight versions of the same painting — the subject of which was a seventeenth-century French nun?

John and her relationship with the Roman Catholic Church are the focus of the first summer loan exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, which opens on 4 July.
Reunited: Gwen John, Mère Poussepin and the Catholic Church is the first exhibition to examine the spiritual side of this reclusive, yet passionate and obsessive British artist, and how her conversion affected her work.

Welsh-born John moved to Meudon, just outside Paris, in 1911 to be close to the home of the sculptor Auguste Rodin, for whom she had modelled, and with whom she had had an affair. However, as their relationship deteriorated, John turned to the Catholic Church for comfort, becoming involved with the nuns from the town’s convent, the Soeurs Dominicaines de Charité de la Presentation de la Sainte Vierge de Tours. She took instruction in the faith, and was received into the Church in early 1913.

Later that year she was commissioned by the nuns to paint a portrait of their seventeenth-century founder, Mère Marie Poussepin, using as inspiration a 1911 prayer-card photograph of an original 17th-century portrait of the nun. This was followed by commissions for as many as seven further copies, one to hang in each cell of the convent — a project that occupied her for some seven years.

While the multiple portraits of Mère Poussepin were to dominate her artistic output for the following decade, John was also a compulsive draughtswoman. During church services, she would often be distracted from her prayers and turn to sketching the figures of devout fellow worshippers — nuns, priests, orphans andmiddle-class townswomen — as they prayed or listened to the sermons. She also became obsessed by certain Catholic figures, such as St Thérèse of Lisieux, images of whom also appear in her sketchbooks.

Although her new-found faith was ridiculed by her brother, the successful portrait-painter Augustus, her notebooks are full of endless poignant reflections on religion, her struggle to lead a pious Christian life, and her art as an expression of her beliefs.

Reunited brings together four of the Mère Poussepin paintings, including the Barber’s own version of the subject and examples from Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, Tate, and Southampton City Art Gallery, alongside a copy of the original prayer card from the National Library of Wales. With generous loans from the National Museum’s holdings of works on paper and private collections, many of which have never been displayed in public before, as well as memorabilia formerly belonging to John, the exhibition also contextualizes the Mère Poussepin series, and features a selection of John’s sketches in pen and watercolour made in church. In addition, the display traces the Mère Poussepin commissions’ profound and lasting effect on the artist’s stylistic development, particularly on her treatment of the seated single female figure, such as Girl in Blue, which has been referred to as her ‘secular nun’ series. The exhibition will be enhanced with commentary on the spiritual aspect of selected works by former nun and Gwen John aficionado, Tessa Frank.

Ann Sumner, Director of the Barber Institute, said “While Gwen John has gradually been recognized as one of the most important female artists of the first half of the twentieth century, her spirituality and its effect on her art is an area that has, until now, received scant attention. This exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to redress that, as well as to examine one of the most popular paintings in the Barber collections and explore a fascinating story about a very individual artist.”