Gwen John: Strange Beauties – a ‘superb’ retrospective

During her lifetime, Gwen John’s achievements were rather overshadowed by those of her younger brother Augustus, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. Today, though, she is arguably Wales’ most famous artist – and, to mark the 150th anniversary of her birth in 1876, she is now the subject of this “superb, daunting” retrospective in Cardiff. It does not give us a blow by blow biography of the artist, who grew up in Haverfordwest and followed her brother to the Slade art school, before moving to France.