Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris brings together paintings, watercolours, drawings and sketches to chronologically trace Gwen John’s 40-year career. The exhibition places her art in relation to the two cities where she chose to live and work: from her early years at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and subsequent training under James Abbott McNeill Whistler at the Académie Carmen in Paris, to her permanent move to Paris in 1904 and the life she built as an artist there.

The exhibition draws on new research into John’s connections to her contemporaries, dispelling the myth that the artist was an eccentric recluse. It also explores the relationship of her work to that of her brother, Augustus John, and Auguste Rodin – with whom she had a ten-year affair.