A pilgrimage to Cardiff Central, sorry, Caerdydd Canolog (according to the signage in the station, which also had my return train’s destination ‘Lundain Padd’ton’) to see the new Gwen John show. She is being lauded as Wales’s greatest artist, but she left Tenby at 18 in 1895, and never went back. After studying at the Slade she moved to Paris, fell in love with Rodin, and adopted the Catholic faith. She ended her days in Meudon in 1939, leaving a cache of work that her nephew Edwin John thankfully rescued before the Nazi invasion, and that the National Museum of Wales (now National Museum Cardiff) had the foresight to acquire in 1976 – 900 drawings, notebooks and paintings that form the backbone of this marvellous show, so big you start to see the world with her discriminating delicacy.

She tempered her paints with gasoline, which evaporated, leaving ground showing through

She tempered her paints with gasoline, which evaporated, leaving ground showing through

The Museum also acquired her work during her lifetime, and the first thing that greets the visitor to the exhibition is a note written by the artist thanking it for purchasing ‘one of my little paintings’. It’s lovely to see her handwriting (and errant spelling – ‘critisism’, ‘devellopment’) across the........

© The Spectator