Edwin John was a solicitor whose dour temperament cast a chill over his family, and Augusta was often absent from the children owing to ill health, leaving her two sisters—stern Salvationists—to take her place in the household.

"[5] Following their mother's premature death in 1884, the family moved to Tenby in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where governesses provided the early education of Gwen and her sister Winifred.

John said that she would make "rapid drawings of beached gulls, shells and fish on stray pieces of paper, or sometimes in the frontispiece of the book she was reading.

[7] From 1895 to 1898, John studied at the Slade School of Art, where the program was modelled after the French atelier method with various levels of student working under a master artist.

[8] It was the only art school in the United Kingdom that allowed female students, although there was generally no mixing of men and women on the grounds, in classes, or in corridors.

[15] Even as a student, Augustus's brilliant draughtsmanship and personal glamour made him a celebrity, and stood in contrast to Gwen's quieter gifts and reticent demeanour.

Augustus greatly admired his sister's work but believed she neglected her health, and he urged her to take a "more athletic attitude to life".

[12] In 1898 she made her first visit to Paris with two friends from the Slade, and while there she studied under James McNeill Whistler at his school, Académie Carmen.

John was given to fierce attachments to both men and women that were sometimes disturbing to them,[23] and Rodin, despite his genuine feeling for her, eventually resorted to the use of concièrges and secretaries to keep her at a distance.

She wrote in 1911: "I paint a good deal, but I don't often get a picture done—that requires, for me, a very long time of a quiet mind, and never to think of exhibitions".

"[32] About 1913, as an obligation to the Dominican Sisters of Charity at Meudon, she began a series of painted portraits of Mère Marie Poussepin (1653–1744), the founder of their order.

[33] These paintings, based on a prayer card, established a format—the female figure in three-quarter length seated pose—which became characteristic of her mature style.

[34] She painted numerous variants on such subjects as Young Woman in a Spotted Blue Dress, Girl Holding a Cat and The Convalescent.

We don't go to Heaven in families now but one by one")[37] and her decision to live in France after 1903 may have been the result of her desire to escape the overpowering personality of her famous brother, although, according to the art historian David Fraser Jenkins, "there were few occasions when she did anything against her will, and she was the more ruthless and dominating of the two".

In December 1926, distraught after the death of her old friend Rilke, she met and sought religious guidance from her neighbour, the neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain.

[41] John's last dated work is a drawing of 20 March 1933, and no evidence suggests that she drew or painted during the remainder of her life.

"[45] Her surviving oeuvre is comparatively small, comprising 158 known oil paintings[46] which rarely exceed 24 inches in height or width.

[29] John's notebooks and letters contain personal formulae for observing nature, painting a portrait, designating colours by a system of numbers, and the like.

Their meaning is often obscure, but they reveal John's predilection for order and the lasting influence of Whistler, whose teaching emphasised systematic preparation.

[50] Gwen John's art, in its quietude and its subtle colour relationships, stands in contrast to her brother's far more vivid and assertive work.

[58] Other nephews and nieces included Sir Caspar, Vivien, Tristan de Vere Cole and Gwyneth Johnstone.