This exhibition was originally planned to be staged at the National Waterfront Museum between 28th of March and 28th of June 2020.
Everybody across Amgueddfa Cymru is very proud of our collaborations with Ysgol Pen-Y Bryn so in light of the current situation we have decided to share the exhibition with you online
The exhibition celebrates the National Waterfront Museum’s ten-year partnership with Ysgol Pen-y-Bryn, with highlights from their amazing past projects. From Welsh Rugby Legends to Pirates this exhibition showcases the talents of the school's pupils and staff. There is also the chance to discover their latest innovative work creating exciting resources for children in schools based on the new Welsh Curriculum.
This is the second part of a look at some of Gwen John’s work in the Amgueddfa Cymru collection. Part one looked at how the largest collection of Gwen John works in the world came together as well as an important example of her early painting technique.
From the mid-1910s onwards, we see this technique change quite dramatically. John moves almost exclusively to female portraits and to applying paint much more sparingly, and with no upper layers or varnishes. Brush strokes become visible and compositions are flatter and less smooth. Again, we see John shift with the artistic movements around her as other artists in Europe were working with similar techniques.
John’s portraits are perhaps what she is best known for. There is something intangible about the mood that these works impart; they are highly emotive, yet elusive. What really highlights John’s genius is how complex these compositions are; how technique is the foundation for the feeling that these portraits exude.
A good way of highlighting this is to look at an unfinished work…
The flatness and tonal harmony of John’s portraits has been discussed often – how the sitter and background often blend together so that they appear as the same surface. What is extraordinary about the way that John worked was that she painted from the edges - often with no preparatory sketching. She would start at a corner of the canvas and work inwards, as we can see here with this work. The facial features become almost secondary in the construction of the painting, as they are painted last, or not at all in this case. Any painters out there will appreciate how hard this is to do – the spatial awareness to be able to form a cohesive work by starting at its extremity is extraordinarily difficult. Also, what this does is heighten the sense that background and sitter are the same thing – the figure, and particularly the facial features, are not given any particular importance over the rest of the structure of the painting.
On the reverse of this painting is another work of the same sitter, clothed this time, and nearer completion. You can see that the features are almost the last part of the painting to be worked on.
We’re now going to come back to Girl in a Blue Dress. From 1915 onwards John’s work changed and this is one of the earliest examples of this dry technique. This is an extraordinary painting and is one of the most popular works in the Museum.
Here John applies a chalk and animal glue ground which contains small bubbles made as the warm glue and chalk are stirred together; creating a textured surface to the canvas. This ground layer and the subsequent oil paint layers are both applied very dryly and thinly, with brush marks left visible.
In these details the brown paint layers can be seen to have skipped over the white ground, leaving much of the ground showing through. This gives the work the appearance of a fading fresco and adds to the sense of fragility of the sitter. The paint is applied so dryly and so evenly to both background and sitter, that they appear the same – they blend into one surface.
Looking at the painting in differing lights shows us some more interesting things.
Light shone from the side shows how uneven the canvas is and very different from a smooth, commercially prepared canvas. This is almost certainly deliberate, adding to that sense of texture.
Infra-red light shows a small amount of preparatory sketch work, outlining the basic elements of the composition prior to painting.
We also know that John came back to rework this painting, as shown here under UV light. This shows that she made changes with a white paint containing more zinc, which shows up under UV. Even as reworking, these are still the slightest of touches.
Most extraordinary though is this…
Shining light through the back of the canvas shows just how little paint has been applied. This highlights John’s skill to produce a work so affecting without really using any paint at all, there’s barely anything there.
The Little Interior (1926)
Oil on canvas Bequeathed by Gaynor Cemlyn-Jones, 2003
22.2 x 27.3 cm
This work from 1926 shows the interior of John’s home in the Paris suburbs and was one of the paintings shown at John’s only solo exhibition held during her lifetime. It shows the sparsest use of colour, predominantly subtle tonal differences of the background with a small focal point of the teapot at the centre of the canvas.
After the horrors of the First World War, many artists rejected avant-garde ideas – returning to more traditional approaches to art. Futurism and Vorticism, for example, which celebrated technology and automation prior to the War, were abandoned as those very things were key contributors to the slaughter. Known as the ‘Return to Order’ this saw artists such as Picasso and Braque largely abandon Cubism for more traditional methods. There was a resurgence of classicism, of order and realism in painting. Alicia Foster writes in her biography of Gwen John that her work seen through the prism of the ‘Call to Order’ is complex, but where John’s work chimes with the movement is through the precise measurement and organisation of colour – as we can see here with The Little Interior.
John described using an extremely complicated numbered disc which denoted colour and tone relationships to any other colour and tone. She also developed her own notation system to sketch out and record planned compositions. This ‘code’ has proved incredibly difficult to crack and her notes have a poetic quality that, while beautiful, makes decoding even harder. For example, what colour do you think this is? ‘April faded pansies on the sands at night’
As well as colour notes, Gwen used a numbering system. She made rapid sketches of everything around her – objects in her room, places she went to, people on trains and in church. This numbering along with colour notations were a way for her to remember the tones or colours of the subjects she’d captured in pencil and charcoal.
She then later reworked the images in watercolour, gouache and sometimes oil, experimenting with the composition and colours.
From around 1913, John converted to Catholicism. Her faith would become hugely important to her and described herself as ‘God’s little artist’. From this point, many of her drawings are of people in church – largely shown from the side or the back.
In Figure in Church, the colour of the dress is a thinner wash of the same colour as the hat and the hair colour is a mixture of the background and the hat. This is key to her harmonious use of colour – that everything is blended together. Simplicity does not necessarily mean that something is simple.
With thanks to Amgueddfa Cymru colleagues past and present from whose research this blog post has been based; particularly David Fraser Jenkins, Beth McIntyre, Kate Lowry and Oliver Fairclough. Moreover, Alicia Foster’s short biography, published by Tate, is an excellent overview and reappraisal of important aspects of John’s career.
We have definitely got closer as we deal with this difficult time. We have got to know neighbours we didn't even know. Every Thursday clapping for the NHS on our doorsteps has made us more of a community. My children have been face timing their friends, writing them letters and drawing them pictures as a way to keep in touch. It's been difficult not seeing family members but we have made sure they are safe and contact them.
The children have been fantastic considering the situation. They have adapted well to homeschooling. Talking is important and the children do ask questions, but I think being honest is best! They miss their friends and family as much as we all do, so regular contact via facetime etc is great! They understand why we must stay at home, but missing normality and just being active and going places and visiting. We have baked more as a family and made our own made pizzas, bread, cookies, cakes because we've had more time together.
It’s a very anxious time. I worry constantly for my family and friends. It's upsetting especially when can't see family and friends or visit. It can be heart breaking not being able to visit our nans, parents as they are shielding due to health reasons. I worry my children will fall behind in school and if I'm doing good with homeschooling. Emotions are like being on a rollercoaster.
No one fails to be impressed by the imposing stone building that is the Oakdale Institute. It was built in 1917, with a loan from the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company and which the miners repaid over the following years. There were no philanthropic Quaker businessmen, like Joseph Rowntree in York and George Cadbury in Bournville, to fund facilities for workers in South Wales.
As volunteers we explain the importance of the actual building but we wish it to be remembered as it was, a cultural centre for the mining community where they educated themselves and enjoyed social activities on a regular basis. We welcome visitors and over the past year have had people from many countries come in to the building from as far away as New Zealand and America.
We have had classes of school children with interesting questions and have endeavoured to bring the institute to life for them and, through stories and laughter, show them how the building was the centre of the community.
On the upper floor of the Institute is a large function room, with a sprung dance floor. One visitor we met used to live in Oakdale and recalled the room full and the floor shaking as he and his friends danced along to a live performance by Shakin’ Stevens - himself a Welshman, from Ely, Cardiff. The function room also houses a pianola, usually an object of curiosity to visitors. However, one visitor recounted how his family used to own a pianola at home, when he was a child. He and his brothers and sisters all contracted scarlet fever, a dangerous illness in the days before antibiotics. Fortunately they all survived but his parents threw the pianola and all the music rolls onto a bonfire, in case they remained sources of infection! The pianola can also be played, of course, as a piano and a visiting French student treated us to a Chopin étude. On another occasion, as the pianola played a dance tune, a couple of visitors spontaneously waltzed around the floor.
Downstairs the miners originally used the reading room, in their precious off duty time, to read newspapers and play card games and dominoes. Today there is a selection of games for children, instead, to play, although mums and dads not infrequently join in. Children wander in, with their parents telling them anxiously not to touch anything. Their reaction when they are told to choose a game is always heartwarming. We sometimes have opportunity to play the games with the children (they invariably win) and often have to explain the rules of forgotten board games to kids who are more familiar with Fortnite than draughts. It is a two way process, however and some have taught us new card games, such as Trash, which was most entertaining. The old fashioned games of snakes and ladders, Ludo, dominoes, draughts and magnetic fishing pool are still enjoyed, though. It is great, in school holiday times, to see a table full of children engrossed in winning their chosen game.
We’re looking forward to an end to the terrible coronavirus illness which is plaguing the world at this time. Oakdale survived Spanish Flu, to flourish again and we look forward to it being able to entertain visitors once again in the future.
I live with my 74 year old widowed mother… I fell badly on 7th May and have been off work with a bad ankle since then. Have mostly been resting my leg to recuperate; watching TV, reading and being online with my mobile phone. Just pottering.
It would usually be “business as usual” for me working shifts as a nurse. I plan to return to work very soon.
I’m a staff nurse (RNLD) and work in a NHS treatment and assessment unit for adults who have a learning disability. Six of our eight patients tested positive for Covid-19, so it was decided that our ward would become the Covid-19/red ward for the site. Two patients tested negative for Covid-19, so were transferred to another (amber) ward. We had to practice barrier nursing with full PPE, masks, face guards and remain vigilant about social distancing and hand washing at all times, where possible. Four of our patients sadly passed away between April 10th and May 8th. It was incredibly difficult and a huge loss to our staff team.
The poignancy of being part of the line-up of staff along the ward to say "goodbye" as the undertaker wheeled the deceased patient(s) past will always stay with me as we knew we wouldn't be able to attend their funerals due to restrictions.
Initially I was very worried, more for my mother than myself. Then trying to help my patients at work became a focus. I was terrified of bringing Covid-19 home to my mother as she has COPD and has been identified as someone who requires shielding. A few of my colleagues have been off self-isolating due to health shielding, and some others caught the virus, so staffing was provided by shuffling staff from other units or using bank staff. Some colleagues moved out of their homes to protect their families; staying in a large holiday home provided by the owners.
I wondered when it was going to be my turn to catch the virus? I told my mother I could try to find alternative accommodation for the duration of this crisis, but she wouldn't hear of it and preferred for things to continue as they were. I carried a lot of anticipated guilt for either possibly passing on the virus to her, or if I were to leave her to live elsewhere against her wishes.
I'm missing my closest friend terribly. We chat through messages or telephone calls, but it's really not the same.
