Lunchtime Talk: The Life of Gwen John with Alicia Foster

Art historian, curator and novelist Dr Alicia Foster, author of Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris and curator of the recent successful exhibition of the same name at the Holburne Museum, Bath, offers a lively, meticulously researched portrait of Gwen John as a vital and utterly compelling figure in 20th-century art. It demolishes the myth of Gwen John as a recluse and situates her, brilliant, singular and assured, amid a rich cultural milieu that included Whistler, Matisse and Picasso. From the life rooms of the Slade to the Paris salons, this is the story of an artist both devoted to her craft and deeply involved in the life and creativity of her era.

Thank you to Royal High School for sponsoring this event.

Dr Alicia Foster is an art historian, curator and novelist. Her publications include Tate Women Artists (2004), Gwen John (2015), Nina Hamnett (2021) and the novel Warpaint (2013), and in 2019 she curated Radical Women: Jessica Dismorr and Her Contemporaries, the first-ever museum show to focus on Dismorr, for which she also wrote the highly praised catalogue. She curated the recent successful exhibition Gwen John, Art and Life in London and Paris at the Holburne Museum, Bath.