Gwyneth Johnstone

Gwyneth Johnstone (18 June 1915 – 8 December 2010) was an English painter who worked in oil and created landscapes containing individuals in modern landscapes starting from the 1950s. Born as the illegitimate daughter to the musician Nora Brownsford and the artist Augustus John, she enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art and later the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Johnstone's work was exhibited in art galleries across the United Kingdom and abroad from the 1960s to the late 2000s.

Biography Gwyneth Johnstone was born on 18 June 1915 in the Norfolk village of Coltishall; she always concealed her actual birth date. Johnstone was the illegitimate daughter of the musician Nora Brownsford and the artist Augustus John. Her mother gave her daughter the allusive surname of Johnstone from a tutor at Alderney and raised her with a distance relationship with her father in Norwich and London.

From March 1933 to June 1938, Johnstone enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in London,

Through her father, Gwen John was her aunt, and Johnstone's half-siblings were cellist Amaryllis Fleming, Caspar John, and fellow artist Vivien John. Her only living half-brother is television director Tristan de Vere Cole. Only Caspar was born from his father's marriage; he was a Royal Navy admiral and later First Sea Lord.

Analysis Johnson was influenced by the Virgilian woodcuts of William Blake, the intense landscapes of Shoreman's primitives and chapbooks. The two noted the individuals, landscapes, the woods and cottages seen in Johnstone's work had "a strong lyrical character".