Footnotes

• PROVENANCE:
  Isabel Bowser
  Lucy Bowser
  Thence by family descent
  
  EXHIBITED:
  London, Barbican Art Gallery, Gwen John, An Interior Life, 12 September - 3 November 1985, no.102; this exhibition travelled to Manchester City Art Gallery, Manchester, 28 November 1985 - 26 January 1986, Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, United States, 26 February - 20 April 1986
  
  The present drawing was gifted by John to Isabel Bowser, a close friend and a keen artist, before being passed to her sister Lucy. John first met Bowser in about 1908 when Gwen sat for her, and it is possible that the pair lived together briefly in the 1910s. Isabel, who owned a number of works by the artist, was also sister to Rhoda Symons, whose husband Arthur was the subject of a series of drawings by John.
  
  The model, Marie Hamonet, sat for John during the artist's time in Pléneuf, a small village on the north coast of Brittany from 1918-19, before marrying and moving to Paris.
  
  We are grateful to Cecily Langdale for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.

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Category: Fine Art / Modern British and Irish Art

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