Gwyneth Johnstone (18 June 1915 – 8 December 2010) was an English painter who worked in oil and created landscapes containing individuals in modern landscapes starting from the 1950s. Born as the illegitimate daughter to the musician Nora Brownsford and the artist

Augustus John Augustus Edwin John (4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961) was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a time he was considered the most important artist at work in Britain: Virginia Woolf remarked that by 1908 the era of John Singer Sarg ...

, she enrolled at the

Slade School of Fine Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

and later the

Académie de la Grande Chaumière The Académie de la Grande Chaumière () is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. History The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the A ...

. Johnstone's work was exhibited in art galleries across the United Kingdom and abroad from the 1960s to the late 2000s.

Biography

Gwyneth Johnstone was born on 18 June 1915 in the

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

village of

Coltishall Coltishall is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. Coltishall is located on the River Bure and within the Norfolk Broads, north-west of Wroxham and north-east of Norwich. Etymology Coltishall's name is of Old Engli ...

; she always concealed her actual birth date. Johnstone was the illegitimate daughter of the musician Nora Brownsford and the artist

. Her mother gave her daughter the allusive surname of Johnstone from a tutor at

Alderney Alderney ( ; ; ) is the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands. It is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a British Crown Dependencies, Crown dependency. It is long and wide. The island's area is , making it the third-largest isla ...

and raised her with a distance relationship with her father in Norwich and London. Johnstone was resented by her half-sisters and was ridiculed by society for being an illegitimate child. She was educated at the

Saint Felix School Saint Felix School is a 2–18 mixed, private, day and boarding school in Reydon, Southwold, Suffolk, England. The school was founded in 1897 as a school for girls but is now co-educational. History The school was founded in 1897 as a girls' s ...

Southwold Southwold is a seaside town and civil parish on the North Sea, in the East Suffolk District, East Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England. It lies at the mouth of the River Blyth, Suffolk, River Blyth in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths ...

, where she saw the paintings of Christopher Wood and other modernists of the era, which were purchased by

Lucy Mary Silcox Lucy Mary Silcox (11 July 1862 – 11 January 1947) was an English headteacher and feminist. She was noted as an inspiring head at three girls' schools. Life Silcox was born in Warminster in 1862. After gaining a first class pass at the class ...

, the school's headteacher. From March 1933 to June 1938, Johnstone enrolled at the

in London, where she struggled early on. There, established life long friendships with fellow artists

Mary Fedden Mary Fedden, (14 August 1915 – 22 June 2012) was a British artist. Early years Sometimes mistakenly described as the daughter of Roy Fedden (who was in fact her uncle, as was Romilly Fedden), Mary Fedden was born in Bristol where she a ...

and Virginia Parsons. Her final year at the art school saw her study stage and decorative painting. Afterwards Johnstone was taught academicised cubism by the painter

André Lhote André Lhote (5 July 1885 – 24 January 1962) was a French Cubist painter of figure subjects, portraits, landscapes, and still life. He was also active and influential as a teacher and writer on art. Early life and education Lhote was bor ...

at the

, and for a brief period in the early 1950s, she took life classes with the surrealist artist Cecil Collins at the

Central School of Arts and Crafts The Central School of Art and Design was a art school, school of fine arts, fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central School ...

. Johnstone's work appeared in several groups, including Young Contemporaries,

The London Group The London Group is a society based in London, England, created to offer additional exhibiting opportunities to artists besides the Royal Academy of Arts. Formed in 1913, it is one of the oldest artist-led organisations in the world. It was form ...

and the

Women's International Art Club The Women's International Art Club, briefly known as the Paris International Art Club, was founded in Paris in 1900. The club was intended to "promote contacts between women artists of all nations and to arrange exhibitions of their work", and ...

, the latter of which she became a vice-president of. Her first solo show was at the Woodstock Gallery in 1960, which she followed with a series of exhibitions at the Portal Gallery, and she went on to showcase her work abroad. According to Tanya Herrod of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', "her art must have appeared wildly out of step with contemporary practice", but her work had a revival with multiple solo exhibitions from the 1980s on, including the New Grafton Art Gallery in 1983, Sally Hunter & Patrick Seale Fine Art two years later, the Michael Parkin Fine Art in 1993 and the School House Gallery at

Wighton Wighton is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is situated some south of the town of Wells-next-the-Sea, north of the town of Fakenham, and north-west of the city of Norwich. The medieval pilgrimage cent ...

near

Wells-next-the-Sea Wells-next-the-Sea is a port town on the north coast of Norfolk, England. The civil parish has an area of and in 2001 had a population of 2,451,Office for National Statistics & Norfolk County Council (2001). Census population and household c ...

in 2007. Johnstone died in Colitishall on 8 December 2010.

Personal life

Johnstone was unmarried but had a relationship with a pianist, Francis Davies, from the 1940s until his death in 2008. She owned homes in southernmost France and later the hills of Benidorm. Through her father,

Gwen John Gwendolen ''Gwen'' Mary John (22 June 1876 – 18 September 1939) was a Welsh people, Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. Her paintings, mainly portraits of anonymous female sitters, are rendered in a range of closely relat ...

was her aunt, and Johnstone's half-siblings were cellist

Amaryllis Fleming Amaryllis Marie-Louise Fleming (10 December 1925 – 27 July 1999) was a British cello performer and teacher. Early life and education Fleming was born in 1925, reportedly in Switzerland.G. R. Seaman, 'Fleming, Amaryllis Marie-Louise (1925? ...

Caspar John Admiral of the Fleet Sir Caspar John (22 March 1903 – 11 July 1984) was a senior Royal Navy officer who served as First Sea Lord from 1960 to 1963. He was a pioneer in the Fleet Air Arm and fought in the Second World War in a cruiser taking ...

, and fellow artist

Vivien John Vivien John (8 March 1915 – 20 May 1994) was a British painter. Biography Vivien John was born at Alderney Manor in Dorset, the daughter of Dorelia McNeill and the artist Augustus John; she was the youngest of their four children together. A ...

. Her only living half-brother is television director

Tristan de Vere Cole Tristan John de Vere Cole (born 16 March 1935) is an English television director, now retired. He is believed to be the last-surviving illegitimate son of the painter Augustus John (1878–1961). In his first career, he was a Royal Navy office ...

. Only Caspar was born from his father's marriage; he was a

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

admiral and later

First Sea Lord First Sea Lord, officially known as First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff (1SL/CNS), is the title of a statutory position in the British Armed Forces, held by an Admiral (Royal Navy), admiral or a General (United Kingdom), general of the ...

Analysis

Johnson was influenced by the Virgilian woodcuts of

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the Romantic poetry, poetry and visual art of the Roma ...

, the intense landscapes of Shoreman's primitives and

chapbook A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was a popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 1 ...

s. She used oil in her paintings, and focused on themes containing "shepherds, fishermen and lovers at ease in wild Mediterranean landscapes", and called her work, "romantic modern landscapes". In the 1977 book ''Twentieth Century British Naïve and Primitive Artists'', Eric Lister and Sheldon Williams wrote of Johnstone's paintings: "Despite the individuality of her work, there is more than a smattering of impressionism in some of the effects she invokes", which give the paintings "a paradoxical sophistication." The two noted the individuals, landscapes, the woods and cottages seen in Johnstone's work had "a strong lyrical character".

References

External links

*
Gwyneth Johnstone: ArtNet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Johnstone, Gwyneth 1915 births 2010 deaths 20th-century English painters Alumni of the Académie de la Grande Chaumière Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art Artists from Norfolk English expatriates in France English expatriates in Spain English landscape painters English people of Welsh descent People educated at Saint Felix School People from Coltishall 20th-century English women painters