Gwen John: Strange Beauties (National Museum, Cardiff until June 28 2026)

Gwen John, Mrs Atkinson, 1898, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Small is big in Gwen John's work. None of her canvases are very large and many of her watercolours are tiny. The range of subjects which interested her was limited. She painted the same subject repeatedly with subtle differences. The curators of Strange Beauties, who lean heavily into her spirituality conversion to Catholicism, highlight her adherence to St. Thérèse of Lisieux's Little Way. 'Smallness' and religion may seem off-putting, but John was neither restrictive nor ascetic. She went to church to sketch as much as to pray, and it was painting itself which drove her with an intense but almost scientific determination to explore the medium and the subject. Across a patchwork of watercolour squares you see notes and coded numbering as she applied and recorded new colour combinations. And the more you look at a line of superficially repetitive figures, the more you meditate on the small but deeply significant compositional and structural differences.

This is a big show of small works - nearly 200 of them - their lack of scale perhaps unhelpfully emphasised by the soaring height of the galleries at Cardiff's National Museum. Unlike the recent Pallant House/ Holburne exhibition, which focused on a limited period, this is a full-blown retrospective, although, partly because of the nature of John's work, much of it will seem familiar to anyone who saw Alicia Foster's 2024 curation. Cardiff takes a broadly chronological but defiantly un-biographical stance. John's early life in Tenby and her Slade years are handled with barely a passing mention of Augustus, her more flamboyant and originally more famous brother. Sometimes, this approach verges on the coy, when brushing aside her 'romance' with Auguste Rodin, or her close friendships with women. Even for someone who dislikes the usual curatorial insistence on biography, there is an annoying inability to pin down Gwen John as a person, beyond the fact that she clearly did not want to be known. 

Arguably, the most revealing self-image shows John drawing herself, standing naked in front of the mirror, sketchbook awkwardly balanced in her outstretched arm. It is entirely without artifice, embarrassment or allure, an academic exercise such as she was taught at the Slade, conveniently and cheaply reenacted in her own room. This steely self-reliance is everywhere, from the astonishing decision to walk to Rome with her friend Dorelia, to her independent existence in Paris and her unsentimental description of World War One bombs. It is also front and centre of every single painting she did of a female figure (and she virtually never painted men): that inscrutable distance, the centered introversion. You could put a wimple of any of them and they would be plausible nuns. 

The early portraits are the most individualised: Chloe Boughton-Leigh, bony and crumpled; Mrs Atkinson, Dickensian in her sallow-skinned shapelessness, Fenella Lovell sullenly defiant as she poses clothed and nude, but they all share that otherworldly disconnection. These are people John knows well, counts as friends, yet she retains a disinterested eye, treating them as flesh and blood still lifes, convenient vehicles through which to explore paint. Her experimentalism is dealt with too cursorily here. Her use of chalky grounds to dry pigment, her single layer brushstrokes which led to whole canvases being abandoned for a single misstep, the rigidly imposed restrictions on colour. These details are perhaps difficult to convey in exhibition labelling. But get up close to any of her works and the surface is alive with texture, the paint taking on a granular, almost sculptural solidity.

Gwen John, The Pilgrim, c.1920, Yale Centre for British Art

The most successful section allows her church watercolours to speak for themselves in a cacophonous choir. Bizarrely the greens and purples and candid camera poses remind me of Toulouse Lautrec's nightclub scenes, all chaotic conversation and composition rather than religion. It is, however, difficult to escape a sense of tailing off, an ever decreasing circles reductionism. The works generally get smaller. John appears to get less satisfied with her art the more she pushes the boundaries, and the final room with its unconvincing sketchy landscapes feels downbeat. It is worth returning to the two centrally placed versions of Pilgrim which bestride the gallery with weight and purpose. They have the presence of Medieval saints, timelessly clad yet distinctly modern, painted almost entirely in blue like a Whistlerian homage yet with none of his hazy ambivalence. John reminds me of her contemporary Helen Schjerbeck, currently on show in New York. They are both almost too idiosyncratic (always seen as a bad trait in a woman) for their own good.

Cardiff is the obvious place to hold this retrospective: the National Museum has the largest collection of John's works in the world, currently over 900 items, and many of the pieces here have rarely been seen in public. The exhibition is travelling to Edinburgh later this year and then on to Yale Center for British Art and the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington: a proper tour which will surely bolster John's status on both sides of the Atlantic. So, this is by any measure an impressive exhibition. My fear, however, is that it reinforces cliches about John's art, rather than challenging them. Those who have already decided that she is cold, limited and essentially too gendered (a sad cat lady) will not find much to change their opinion; fans will love it. As for those discovering the artist for the first time, John requires thought and close looking. Small things come to those who wait. 

'The Rossettis Siblings and Spouses' (Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton until November 2026)

Elizabeth Siddal, The Haunted Wood, 1856, Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

Wightwick Manor ought to be a recognised halt on the Pre-Raphaelite pilgrimage trail, but perhaps because of its inauspicious location on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, perhaps because has been subsumed into the National Trust portfolio, it is not as well known as it should be. A beautifully intact Arts and Crafts house, it boasts a superb carved timber exterior and interior rooms decorated with Morris and Co wallpaper and stained glass. However, it is the art collection massed by paint magnate Sir Geoffrey Mander and his wife which is the real draw. Now, the National Trust have raided their store and produced an exhibition of works by the Rossettis, Siblings and Spouses. It should be a treat but although there are plenty of individual treasures, the overall show is less than the sum of its parts.

The major problem is one of display. The exhibition sprawls through the house with screens in front of other objects and little sense of cohesion. The house itself is cluttered, dark and domestic - a perfect, cosy House Beautiful but not ideal as an exhibition space. The National Trust are not keen on labels at the best of times: visitors are usually reliant on effusive volunteer guides and a slightly dog-eared folder detailing items and paintings in each room. Here, the folders are out of date, with normally displayed works moved to accommodate exhibition pieces, and the guides themselves seemed a little bemused by the changes. The result is frustrating: one is never quite sure what is part of the Rossettis show, and a great deal of time is spent leafing through the scant information available. The curators, perhaps in an effort to combat this, have produced large information boards full of biographical detail and contemporary quotes. The hall contains a family tree and gives each focus member a nickname (Christina, for instance, is The Famous One). They tell a great story but it is a lot to read and retain.

The Rossettis are collectively, of course, a compelling subject - here regularly and not inaccurately compared to the Brontes - but not an easy one to negotiate. Tate Britain tried it a few years ago, with only partial success: that exhibition kept teetering towards being the Dante Gabriel Show. Curators Hannah Squire and Helen Bratt-Wyton have given themselves a harder task by including not only all four siblings, but also Elizabeth Siddal and Lucy Madox Brown (Ford's daughter, who married William Michael Rossetti).  Only three of the six are recognised as artists, although there is a small Veronese copy tentatively attributed to Christina on show, and indeed Maria Rossetti eschewed culture altogether in favour of a life of religious devotion. Added to this, the exhibition is restricted by its determination to only use in-house material, so there are few famous showstoppers. Paradoxically, this becomes its strength. Whereas Tate couldn't resist splashing big Rossetti canvases, here arguably the most impressive work on show is actually by the least heralded artist. Lucy Madox Brown's Romeo and Juliet, all gothic pallor and shadows, is a tantalising glimpse of the career she might have had, if marriage, motherhood and ill-health had not intervened. 

Ford Madox Brown, William Michael Rossetti by Lamplight, 1856, Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

In the main, this is a show of small things. Lady Mander was an enthusiastic collector of Siddal's work and one of the bedrooms is devoted to her tiny, angular, Medievalist drawings and two richly coloured gouaches which are reminiscent of Samuel Palmer in their claustrophobic intensity. Two pencil versions of an ecstatic St Cecilia also stand out. Rossetti's lithographic experiments are fascinating (and newly acquired) and the emphasis on his early drawings provides an interesting counterpoint to the more usual focus on his late 'stunners'. Works like The Bivouac After the Ball and the Shadowless Man have a fluid bulkiness which prefigures the curvilinear strength of his later figures and make his Pre-Raphaelite works seem like an increasingly uncharacteristic interlude. Much is also made of portraits, including Rossetti's tender pencil drawing of his mother and jokey cartoon of a tantrum-ing Christina. Indeed, one of the excuses for the whole exhibition is a newly acquired pastel portrait of a middle-aged Christina, painted soon after the death of her sister Maria and weighty with sadness. Wightwick also holds the famous Madox Brown portrait of William Michael Rossetti by Lamplight and a delightful representation of his daughter, Lucy, all jaunty ribbons and reluctant smile.

I would recommend a visit to Wightwick Manor under any circumstances but for the casual visitor I am not sure how much the exhibition will enhance the experience. The material and curatorial effort merit a better exhibition space, and the addition of a few loans - perhaps through a partner institution - could have raised this from a decent to a spectacular show. That said, this remains a must-see for anyone interested in the Rossettis and the domestic setting is ideal for small works which would get overwhelmed in a gallery space. There is an added bonus for Evelyn De Morgan fans: two of her works have been relocated to the Malthouse Gallery giving a first chance to see them in good lighting and all their glorious colour.