‘A very important event!’: the role of the letter in Gwen John’s artistic practice

In 1902, Gwen John wrote ‘To me the writing of a letter is a very important event!’ Indeed, John’s extensive correspondence with artists, friends, patrons, and lovers constitute one of the best-preserved archives of any early twentieth-century woman artist. While this in itself testifies to the importance of writing to her personally, this paper will go beyond the archive to draw connections between John’s writing and her oeuvre.

John not only wrote letters, but also wrote extensive notes, rules for art and life, and copied out quotes. Motifs of women reading and writing appear in her work throughout her career, including in self-portraits such as the one she sent to Auguste Rodin c. 1908, to whom she also wrote over 900 letters. Formal similarities appear between her writing and her drawing, and, I argue, both fulfilled the same role in her creative practice later in life. Around 1928 she wrote infatuatedly to a neighbour: “When I asked you if my drawings spoke to you like letters, you said that you are not a painter, but that you found them nice. [...] What I wanted to know is if a drawing reminds you of me the same way a letter does. [...] it seems to me it might be better than a letter.” John’s letters bely a deep desire to communicate across visual and linguistic barriers. This paper explores the role of the letter in both her archive and oeuvre through close analysis of image and text.