Study of 13 unknown girls

Orphans and Unknown Girls is a body of work depicting the bows and ribbons, that adorn the hair of orphans and unknown girls that the painter, Gwen John (1876 -1939) had drawn during mass at the local church in Meudon. Painted in watercolour using vermillion, the works explore the anonymity of the unidentified young girls whilst purposefully reworking the bows in red, contemplating the decorative and frivolous nature of the bow and its function of constraining the hair. In a notebook John wrote an intriguing entry:

“orphan in church (1st Vendredi) (quiet happiness). Marigold. Child with a vermilion bow on a gold ground (a smile)” (1)

The works were inspired by an academic article by Professor Anna Gruetzner Robins revealing her chance encounter with John’s drawings and watercolours of nuns and orphans in the library of Princeton University that were unattributed to John as well as Falcini’s own extensive research of similar works held in the National Museum Wales’s collection.

1. Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan (ed.) Gwen John: Letters and Notebooks, (London: Tate Publishing, 2004); cited in Gruetzner-Robins, Gwen John: Two Albums of Watercolours, 649.
2. Anna Gruetzner Robins, Gwen John: Two Albums of Watercolours, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol 72, No.3 (Spring 2011), pp. 641 -683

Anna Gruetzner Robins, Gwen John: Two Albums of Watercolours, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol 72, No.3 (Spring 2011), pp. 641 -683