Gwen John studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, and briefly under Whistler in Paris, later settling there and modelling for Rodin, with whom she had a long relationship. She was one of few women artists, alongside fellow WIAC exhibitor Marie Laurençin, to be included in the 1913 Armory Show (International Exhibition of Modern Art) in New York. She also exhibited with the New English Art Club. She focused particularly on portraits of women and interiors, often reworked in several iterations, including numerous small scale watercolour studies of women in the interior of Meudon church in the 1920s. In 1952 she featured posthumously in the prestigious Art News & Review ‘Portrait of the Artist’ series (one of 25 WIAC artists to do so between 1949 and 1960).