Artistiaid o Gymru – Welsh Artists in the NGV Collection

A big THANK YOU to Wendy Hughes Chuck for telling us about her connections with Welsh Art in the NGV Collection.

Having been brought up in Wales, I was aware of a number of Welsh artists in the NGV collection and thought that I might one day work up a tour around the subject. Now, thanks to the coronavirus I have found the time to do a bit of research. The Welsh artists I have identified are: Richard Wilson (1713-1782); Owen Jones         (1809-1874); Penry Williams (1817-1885); Gwen John (1876-1939) and her brother, Augustus John (1878-1961); Susan Williams-Ellis (1918-2007); Gareth Jones-Roberts (1935-2017    ); Alun Leach-Jones (1937-2017) and Tim Jones (1962-     ).

Welsh surnames abound in the NGV Collection (Jones, Williams, Ellis, Evans, John, Pugh, Parry, Hughes, etc.) but there is not always a Welsh connection to be found. Some are Australian born. Troy Hughes, who has one work in our collection, turns out to be a Pitjantjara artist from the APY Lands in South Australia. Apart from his surname I could not find a Welsh connection for Troy. Some were born in England, often to Welsh parents, such as Alun Leach-Jones who immigrated to Australia in 1960. Some have a Welsh name but no trace of Welsh ancestry can be found, for example, pre-Raphaelite artist Arthur Hughes (1832-1915) who has 14 works in our collection including La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1863) and was was born in London. Some twentieth century Welsh-born artists, such as Tim Jones (1962-  ) immigrated to Australia in their youth and did their art training here, at the VCA in Tim Jones’ case.

The NGV has 13 works by Richard Wilson in the collection but only one Welsh landscape, his painting of Llyn (lake) Peris – Dolbadarn Castle was painted c. 1760-1763 and cleaned and restored in 2000. It hangs near Miss Susannah Gale. It is a Welsh lakeside scene with a 13^th century castle built by the Welsh Prince Llewellyn the Great in the background. However the style clearly reflects the six years Wilson spent in Italy during the 1750s.  Also shown here is his Landscape with Italian Buildings dated to his time spent in Italy, 1750-56. Wilson was born in Penegoes, Montgomeryshire in 1713, and the son of a Welsh clergyman. He began his career as a portrait painter in London and moved to Italy, becoming a landscape painter heavily influenced by the work of Claude Lorrain. John Ruskin wrote of him, “He paints in a manly way and occasionally reaches exquisite tones of colour.” Other Welsh scenes by Wilson, not in the NGV, include Llyn-y-Cau, Cader Idris c.1774 which hangs in the Tate in London and a portrait of his cousin, Miss Catherine Jones of Colomendy c. 1740 in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

Owen Jones (1809-1874), an artist and architect and first Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, has just one work in our collection, a watercolour, Design for Peri, 1870, which resembles William Morris’ wallpaper designs. He was the son of another Owen Jones, an antiquary and Welsh bard (bardic name: Owain Myfyr). Jones made a study of Islamic art and was known for his designs for mosaics, tessellated pavements and wallpaper.

Penry Williams was born in 1817 in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, and worked in Italy between 1826 and 1885. His work, The Italian Family was one of the initial paintings selected and purchased by Sir Charles Eastlake, Director of the National Gallery in London, for the NGV’s founding collection. The work is referred to in a letter from Eastlake to Sir Redmond Barry in 1864, three years after the opening of the NGV. There are two works by Williams in our collection.

Perhaps best known among the Welsh artists in the NGV collection are the siblings, Gwen and Augustus John, born in Southwest Wales in Haverfordwest and Tenby, respectively. There are two works by Gwen John (1876-1939) in the collection, Interior with Figures 1898-99 and The Nun c.1915-20, painted as one of a series done in a convent in Meudon, a Parisian suburb where she spent many years after converting to Roman Catholicism in 1913. Gwen was overshadowed by her younger brother, Augustus, a larger-than-life personality. She worked in France for most of her career after studying at the Slade. In Paris she studied under James Abbott McNeill Whistler and modelled to support herself, including for Auguste Rodin whose lover she became. She also enjoyed a close friendship with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke whom she met through Rodin.

Augustus John also studied at the Slade where he was considered the most talented draughtsman of his generation. He married Ida Nettleship, a friend of his sister who is featured in her Interior with Figures (1898-99) one of the two works by Gwen John in the NGV collection. The NGV possesses 20 works by Augustus John including The Artist’s Daughter c.1927-28 and The Beautiful Gardener (La Belle Jardinière) c.1911 and an etching of the sculptor Jacob Epstein done in 1906. Augustus spent two years painting in the Arenig Valley in Snowdonia, especially featuring the mountain Arenig Fawr. This was the subject of a 2011 BBC documentary, “The mountain that had to be painted.” In 1928 John appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. Although he was initially known for his drawings and etchings, most of his later work consisted of portraits of distinguished contemporaries including T. E Lawrence (of Arabia), Thomas Hardy, W. B Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Tallulah Bankhead. His most famous portraits were of his fellow Welshman, the poet Dylan Thomas, which can be seen in the National Portrait Gallery in London and the National Museum of Wales.

Alun Leach-Jones (1937-2017) is listed on the NGV website as an Australian/British artist. He was born in Maghull, Lancashire in 1937 not far from the Welsh border and spent his childhood in Glasfryn in North Wales. He studied at the Liverpool College of Art, alma mater of John Lennon, and moved to Adelaide in 1960, settling in Melbourne in 1966. His style is known as Hard-edge painting and his work was featured in the NGV’s The Field in 1968.  The NGV has 18 of his works in its collection.

Gareth Jones-Roberts, born 1935, has just one work in the collection. He immigrated to Australia in 1949 and worked with communist, atheist and activist, Noel Counihan and others on the design for the first issue of The Broadsheet series. This issue is called Napalm Sunday. He was an Archibald finalist in 1971.

Ceramic designer Susan Williams-Ellis (1918-2007), is listed as English on the NGV website. However, she is the daughter of the renowned Welsh architect Clough Williams-Ellis who in 1926 created the Italianate village, Portmeirion, on the North Wales coast. Her line of pottery was named Portmeirion after her father’s village. There are 10 Portmeirion Pottery works in the NGV collection. Before launching her Portmeirion pottery line, Susan studied art in Chelsea under Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. Some of the rooms in Portmeirion village feature has textile designs.

And that leaves one more “Jones”. Tim Jones was born in 1962 in Clwyd, North Wales. He studied art at Newcastle-upon-Tyne Polytechnic and  after arriving in Australia in 1985 took a post-graduate diploma in sculptured at the VCA. He  has worked in Australia from 1989 and now lives near Hanging Rock. NGV holds 15 of his works, mostly wood engravings, one of which, his portrait of artist, Paul Nash, 1985 is shown here.   

What a wonderful resource for us all. Well done, Wendy!