The National Museum Cardiff launched Gwen John: Strange Beauties on 7 February, according to Amgueddfa Cymru, presenting the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in more than 40 years. The exhibition draws on the museum’s own extensive holdings, which began with its 1935 purchase of Girl in a Blue Dress for £20, and incorporates loans from the Tate, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. More than 200 paintings, drawings, watercolours, sketchbooks, letters and archival items are on display, a Museum Wales announcement stated, highlighting pieces that John kept in her studio and never sold during her lifetime.
Born in Haverfordwest in 1876, Gwen John studied at the Slade School of Art in London before settling in Paris, where she developed her distinctive intimate portraits and still lifes, The Art Newspaper reported. She was admired by contemporaries in the French capital yet sold few works while alive and remained overshadowed by her brother Augustus John, whose fame eclipsed hers for decades. Museum Wales data shows the institution now holds the world’s largest public collection of her pieces, acquired through purchases and gifts since that initial 1935 acquisition.
The exhibition explores John’s deep engagement with form, materials and colour theory, a focus emphasised by curators Rachel Stratton and Lucy Wood in their planning for the show. Late watercolours that stayed unseen in her studio until her death in 1939 receive particular attention, according to the museum’s description of the display. These works, alongside rarely exhibited drawings, offer fresh insights into her process and challenge earlier assessments that centred mainly on her portraits of women.
Amgueddfa Cymru organised the retrospective in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland, the Yale Center for British Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, the collaborating institutions confirmed. The exhibition will travel to Edinburgh from 1 August 2026 to 4 January 2027, then to New Haven, Connecticut, from 18 February to 20 June 2027 and finally to Washington from 30 July to 28 November 2027. This international tour marks the largest such presentation of John’s oeuvre to date.
Fashion designer JW Anderson, who owns several of John’s works, collaborated on the Cardiff show by creating five cornettes, elaborate headdresses inspired by those worn by Dominican nuns in her late drawings, a Museum Wales statement said. The pieces, produced in varied fabrics and colours drawn from her palette, stand at the exhibition entrance and have since been donated to the national collection. Anderson’s contribution provides a contemporary dialogue with John’s sensitivity to texture and repetition, the museum noted.
Lucy Wood, the co-curator, told The Art Newspaper that John never stopped working to the very end. She worked hard every day, thought deeply about colour and form, and wrote about what she did. That is what we hope to show in this exhibition. The display also includes a family trail for younger visitors that references John’s cat named Edgar Quinet, adding an accessible layer to the presentation of her archive and working methods.
