Looking to the Past, an Artist Finds a Soul Mate in Gwen John

LETTERS TO GWEN JOHN
By Celia Paul

“I hate the phrase ‘muse,’” Celia Paul writes in her glorious new guide, “Letters to Gwen John.” She additionally hates being referred to as “an artist in her personal proper.” It wasn’t till after Lucian Freud died in 2011 that she escaped both time period. She was 52, an acclaimed artist, and lengthy married to Steven Kupfer. The affair that branded her was effectively previously, nevertheless it was solely with Freud’s demise that she might achieve some management of the story.

For Paul, wanting again to be able to look ahead, the artist who leaps throughout time is Gwen John — who was herself Auguste Rodin’s muse. When she grew to become his mannequin and lover, in 1904, Rodin was 36 years her senior, monumental, lauded and highly effective. She referred to as him her maître. Equally, Paul was 37 years youthful than Freud when she fell below his spell in 1978 (she was 18), and he too was monumental, lauded and highly effective. “Focus” was Freud’s phrase: focus within the title of artwork, justifying all his conduct. Rodin for his half professed to resign each day trivia within the title of artwork.

Paul first wrote of those parallels in her 2019 memoir, “Self-Portrait.” Not solely the power unfaithfulness of those males, however the longing and the ready suffered by the ladies, and the profound impact on their very own artwork. John went inward, and painted out from there. Paul by no means emulated the tough scrutiny Freud turned on his fashions. She wished to color her topics like handwritten letters, with the artist’s character etched into them. She wished to “paint honestly,” as John had executed.

John wrote many letters, a type of intimacy that guided and steadied her. Paul quotes from them as she tracks the affinities of their artwork, the complexity of their journeys, the isolation pressured on them. A lady can do quite a bit within the shadow realm, she says, however there comes a time when cellar residing is barely good for “potatoes.” Was that why the ocean was so essential to them each? Its broad horizon, the boundless wash of time? John didn’t paint human getting older — as, more and more, Paul does — however she painted the passing of time, the fleeting glimpse as life occurs.