Gwendoline Davies

Gwendoline Elizabeth Davies (born February 11, 1882 in Llandinam , † July 3, 1951 in Oxford ) was a Welsh art collector and patron . With her inherited fortune, she, like her sister Margaret , amassed one of the earliest collections of modern art in Great Britain. These works of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism , along with older paintings from her possession, were donated to the National Museum Cardiff after her death . In addition, she promoted literature with her own publishing house and, as co-founder of the Gregynog Music Festival, music in Wales.

Family and youth

The grandfather of Gwendoline Davies, David Davies (1818–1890), who came from a poor background, established the family's considerable fortune. He rose from a worker in a sawmill to the owner of coal mines, railway lines and shipyards. The only son and heir to this property was Edward Davies (1852–1898), the father of Gwendoline. He married the pastor's daughter Mary Jones, the mother of Gwendoline and her siblings Margaret and David (1880–1944, later 1st Baron Davies). After the mother's early death - Gwendoline was just six years old - the father married his wife's sister, Elisabeth Jones, in 1891, who from then on raised Gwendoline Davies and her siblings. In addition to Aunt Elisabeth, governess Jane Blaker took over the upbringing of the children after the mother's death. Gwendoline Davies attended highfield school in Hendon and later went on study trips to France, Germany and Italy with her sister and the governess. Although raised multilingual, she never learned the Welsh language of her homeland, the culture of which she was particularly committed to in adulthood. She was particularly influenced by the Calvinist religion, to which her family professed. With this in mind, she got involved in charity, visual arts, literature and music. She played the violin herself and owned a Stradivarius .

The art collector

From 1908 the Davies sisters began to build up their art collections, each of them choosing works of art according to their own taste, which were united under one roof, but still did not represent a common collection. Gwendoline Davies' earliest acquisitions include works by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , from whom she acquired the painting The Pond in 1908 and a view of Castel Gandolfo in 1909 . In the same year she bought The Little Goose Girl, the first painting by Jean-François Millet , of which the paintings The Good Samaritan , The Sower , The Shooting Stars and The Brushwood Collectors also found their way into the collection in the following years . Gwendoline Davies acquired many of the most important works in the collection in the short period from 1912 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. These include workers on the street , a walk in the moonlight and the head of a man by Honoré Daumier , Venice, the landing stage at the mouth of the Canale Grande by Eugène Boudin , Effet de neige à Petit-Montrouge by Édouard Manet , A Court in Summer by Adolphe Monticelli and by Eugène Carrière the paintings The Suffering , The Footbath , Mother with Child and Motherhood . It was also during this time that, in addition to the two Venice views, The Twilight and San Giorgio Maggiore, she acquired three water lily paintings by Claude Monet . In March 1913 came with the painting La Parisienne by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , the most famous image in their collection. In addition, she acquired the sculptures Ewiger Frühling , Zur Erde fallen Illusion , Die Erde und der Mond as well as two works entitled The Kiss (one each in bronze and one in marble) from Auguste Rodin . In 1913, works of art from the collections of Gwendoline and Margaret were first shown at Cardiff City Hall .

The First World War initially brought an interruption in the development of the collection. The Davies sisters, together with their friends Thomas Jones and Major Burdon-Evans, took care of the reception of Belgian refugees in Wales. Thanks to the support of the Davies sisters, art students and artists in particular could be accommodated in Wales until the end of the war. They included the sculptor George Minne and the painters Valerius de Saedeleer and Gustave van de Woestyne with their families.

In 1916 Gwendoline Davies began working for the London Committee of the French Red Cross. During this time she acquired Rodin's bronze sculpture Eva . In the same year she went to France for the Red Cross. In Troyes she worked in the canteen of a transit camp of the French army. In March 1917, she also briefly visited Verdun, which had been destroyed by the war . Although travel within France was difficult during the war, Gwendoline Davies made repeated trips to Paris on behalf of the Red Cross and used the opportunities to acquire additional works of art for her collection. In April 1917, while visiting the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris, she bought the paintings Lunch in the Country by Daumier and The Tin Cup by Carrière. In December of the same year, when she visited Bernheim-Jeune again, she acquired the painting The Hare , a Seated Couple by Renoir and Monet, a painting from the Rouen Cathedral series . Another visit to Bernheim-Jeune followed in February 1918, when Gwendoline Davies acquired her first pictures from Paul Cézanne with Berge bei L'Estaque and Landschaft in Provence . The following month, Don Quixote, while reading , was another Daumier who came into her collection.

After the First World War, only a few works of art ended up in the collection of Gwendoline Davies. In March 1920 these were the paintings A Famous Trial by Daumier, Dawn by Carrière, Still Life with Teapot by Cézanne and Rain - Auvers by Vincent van Gogh . In March 1923, Gwendoline Davies also bought two bronze sculptures with dancers by Edgar Degas , of which the painting is missing in the collection of Gwendoline and her sister Margaret. In 1926 Gwendoline Davies stopped collecting because she found the ever increasing prices on the art market to be immoral. After her death, her art collection, which, in addition to works of art from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, also included paintings by Botticelli and several works by William Turner , was moved to what is now the National Museum in Cardiff.

Painting from the Gwendoline Davies collection

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  Pierre-Auguste Renoir:
  La Parisienne

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  Paul Cézanne:
  Mountains at L'Estaque

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  Édouard Manet:
  The hare

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  Vincent van Gogh:
  Rain in Auvers

Gregynog as a cultural center

Gregynog , a manor house in the Welsh county of Powys , became the center of life for the Davies sisters after the First World War. They acquired the property in 1920 and had the house and the gardens and parks extensively restored in the years that followed. The house not only served as a residence, but was developed into a cultural center by Gwendoline and Margaret Davies. In 1922 they founded a private printing company for limited, hand-bound editions under the name Gregynog Press. As a passionate musician, Gwendoline Davies was also committed to promoting classical music in Wales. Together with her sister Margaret, she invited important musicians of her time, such as Vaughan Williams , Gustav Holst , Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten, to their Gregynog country estate from 1932 , thus establishing the Gregynog Music Festival . In the 1930s, the festival was one of the greatest cultural and social events in Great Britain, so the Davies sisters also welcomed the playwright George Bernard Shaw and the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin among the guests .

literature

• Peter Hughes, Penny Stamp: French Art from the Davies Legacy. National Museum of Wales, Cardiff 1982, ISBN 0-7200-0237-0
• Susanna de Vries-Evans: The Lost Impressionists Roberts Rinehart Publishers 1992 ISBN 1-879373-25-4

Web links

• Biography of Davies sisters on the website of the BBC (English)