La Retraite, sketchbook, March 1928

In 1910 Gwen John moved to the Parisian suburb of Meudon where she was to spend the rest of her life. At Meudon, she met the nuns at the Covent of the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation, who ran a school for orphans. Aside from several still-lifes and landscapes, these nuns and orphans became the focus of John’s watercolours and gouaches for the next 15 to 20 years. The artist’s church drawings typically depict back or side views of members of the congregation. As the present lot suggests, John often produced multiple versions of a given subject and worked on groups of pictures simultaneously.
Gwen John moved away from the fluid drawings washed with watercolour of the 1910s to a later use of gouache and heavy outlines, as her gouaches began to experiment with simplified composition and a muted palette, all of which can be seen in the present lot. This sketchbook has remained in private hands for almost a century.