The first critical illustrated biography of this much-loved artist, locating her firmly in the art worlds of late 19th- and early 20th-century London and Paris. One of the most significant British artists of the twentieth century, Gwen John (1867-1939) made her life and work within the heady art worlds of London and Paris. This critical biography demolishes the myth of Gwen John as a recluse and situates her, brilliant, singular and assured, amid a rich cultural milieu that included James McNeill Whistler, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Maude Gonne. Art historian, curator and novelist Alicia Foster draws on previously unpublished archival sources to explore John’s many relationships with artists and writers, including her affair with Auguste Rodin, passionate friendships with Jeanne Robert Foster and Véra Oumançoff, and correspondence with, among others, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and her Slade compatriot and fellow painter Ursula Tyrwhitt. John’s library, ranging from writing by her friends Rilke and Arthur Symonds to French philosophy and religious thought, is considered, as is her part in the increasing presence and visibility of women artists in the early-twentieth-century art world. 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. With over 120 illustrations, Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris offers a lively, meticulously researched portrait of Gwen John as a vital and utterly compelling figure in twentieth-century art history.

Radical Women tells an original story of British modernism from the perspective of Jessica Dismorr's career, along with the women artists - some famous, some lesser-known - she worked and exhibited with. The work of Jessica Dismorr (1885-1939) has been described as encapsulating 'the stylistic developments of twentieth-century British Art', and her oeuvre certainly encompasses some of its most exciting moments - from Rhythm in the early 1910s, through Vorticism, towards post-war modernist figuration and finally into the abstraction she shared with radical political artists groups in the 1930s. Within this period of intense creativity, which extended beyond art to literary and design accomplishments too, Dismorr was privileged to work and exhibit alongside some of the most exciting female artists of the time, including Barbara Hepworth and Winifred Nicholson, to lesser-known figures such as Dorothy Shakespear, Anne Estelle Rice and Helen Saunders. Bringing a web of fascinating connections to light for the first time, this publication provides a fresh interpretation of a pioneering period and the role women played within it.