The quiet genius of Gwen John

In the rush to right the historical gender balance, galleries have been corralling neglected women artists into group exhibitions: the Whitechapel Gallery rounded up 80 women abstract expressionists for its recent Action, Gesture, Paint show. But imbalances can’t be corrected retrospectively. Rather than elevating women artists who didn’t make it in a male-dominated world – not all of whose work, if we’re honest, helps the female cause – we should be celebrating the grit and talent of the few who did. And Berthe Morisot and Gwen John – currently the subjects of solo shows at Dulwich Picture Gallery and Pallant House – had both in spades.

In a new biography, Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris, Alicia Foster, curator of the Pallant House show, dismantles the myth of John as a timid recluse: from the moment she left her hometown of Tenby to join her younger brother Augustus at the Slade in 1895, then abandoned London for Paris, John was a woman in full charge of her destiny.