Margaret Davies

This article is about art collector Margaret Davies. For the herpetologist of the same name, see Margaret Davies (zoologist) .

Margaret Sidney Davies (born December 14, 1884 in Llandinam , † March 13, 1963 in London ) was a Welsh art collector and patron . Together with her sister Gwendoline , she was one of the earliest collectors of modern art in Great Britain. After her death, her art collection was donated to the National Museum Cardiff . She was also a co-founder of the Gregynog Music Festival , one of the most important music festivals in her country.

family

The fortune of the Davies family founded Margaret's grandfather David Davies (1818–1890). The poor Welshman rose from a sawmill worker to one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs in Great Britain. His extensive holdings included coal mines, railroad lines and shipyards. After David Davies' death, his only son, Edward Davies (1852-1898) inherited the property. From Edward's marriage to the pastor's daughter Mary Jones, the children David (1880-1944, later 1st Baron Davies), Gwendoline (1882-1951) and Margaret were born. Mary Jones died in 1888. Edward Davies married Elisabeth Jones (1853–1942), sister of his late wife, three years later.

Life

After the early death of her mother, her aunt and later stepmother Elisabeth Jones took over the upbringing of Margaret and her sister Gwendoline together with the governess Jane Blaker. She received her education at the Highfield School in Hendon . Although she later made a special commitment to the culture of her Welsh homeland, Welsh was not one of the languages ​​she learned. Her Calvinist home influenced Margaret Davies' religious upbringing. So she took part in church services every week and grew up knowing that for her the inherited fortune was an obligation for socio-political engagement. Excessive luxury and waste of time were against the principles of their upbringing. Because of this, she never went to dance or opera performances. Instead, she became interested in gardening, charitable causes, the visual arts, literature, and music. She played the harp herself and was an enthusiastic amateur painter. She received an artistic training at the Slade School of Art in London. Study trips to France, Germany and Italy deepened her knowledge of art history. From 1906, like her sister, she began to build up an art collection. She initially focused on works from the Barbizon School before acquiring Impressionist works from 1912 . Together with her sister Gwendoline, she showed her art collection to the public for the first time in Cardiff City Hall in 1913 .

During the First World War , the Davies sisters were involved in the humanitarian field. After the occupation of Belgium by German troops, they organized the reception of Belgian refugees. Thomas Jones and Major Burdon-Evans, friends with the Davies sisters, traveled to Belgium on their behalf to bring art students and artists to Wales to safety. The sculptor George Minne and the painters Valerius de Saedeleer and Gustave van de Woestyne with their families were among the artists who came under the care of the Davies sisters and stayed in Wales until the end of the war .

From 1916 the Davies sisters worked for the London Committee of the French Red Cross. Margaret Davies went to France in June 1917 to look after soldiers in a transit camp of the French army in Troyes . Here she supported her sister Gwendoline, who had been working in the canteen there since the previous year.

In 1920 Margaret Davies bought the Welsh manor Gregynog together with her sister Gwendoline . In the following years they devoted themselves to the extensive restoration of the property and the layout of the garden and park landscape. Initially only used as a residence, the Gregynog sisters developed into a cultural center in Wales. In 1922 they founded Gregynog Press, a private printing company for limited, hand-bound editions. After Margaret had previously worked for the Welsh Folk Song Society and the University Music Club in Aberystwyth for the promotion of Welsh music, she founded the Gregynog Music Festival with her sister in 1932 . With famous contemporary musicians such as Vaughan Williams , Gustav Holst , Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten , the Davies sisters established their residence as a major center of music in the UK in the 1930s. British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and playwright George Bernard Shaw were among the many music-loving guests at Gregynog, who were able to see the Davies sisters' art collections in addition to the concerts .

Margaret Davies, who remained unmarried all her life, donated her residence to Gregynog of the University of Wales in 1960 , whose honorary doctorate she had received in 1949. Following the example of her sister, who died in 1951, she bequeathed her art collection to the National Museum Cardiff.

Art collection

Margaret Davies acquired her first work of art in 1906 with a painting by the English painter Hercules Brabazon Brabazon (1821–1906). Advised by Hugh Blaker , the brother of her governess Jane Blaker and curator of the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath , the actual collecting activity began in 1908 with the purchase of William Turner's The Storm . This was followed by some more traditional jobs, such as Piquetspiel of Ernest Meissonier and works of the Barbizon school . These include a rural concert ( Fête Champêtre ) by Narcisso Virgilio Díaz de la Peña , fishermen anchored on the bank and distant view of Corbeil in the morning by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and The Peasant Family by Jean-François Millet .

In addition to Hugh Blaker, David Croal-Thomsen, who worked for the London branch of the Durand-Ruel art dealer, acted as advisor in building up the art collection . Under his influence, Margaret Davies acquired her first Impressionist paintings by the beginning of the First World War. These included the return of the harvest workers by Léon Augustin Lhermitte , Palazzo Dario, Venice and The Charing Cross Bridge, London by Claude Monet and Head of a Girl by Pierre-Auguste Renoir . It was also during this period that the painting The Potions by Honoré Daumier and the sculpture John the Baptist by Auguste Rodin were acquired .

Unlike her sister Gwendoline, Margaret Davies did not buy any works of art during World War I. An exception to this is the purchase of Alfred Stevens ' painting Seated Girl , which she acquired in London in January 1918. In 1919, two versions of Daumier's third class railroad cars entered Margaret Davies' collection. Both the finely executed painting and a more cursory oil sketch of this subject were in her collection for several decades before she sold the oil painting again in 1960.

At the beginning of the 1920s, Margaret Davies completed her collection with further works by the Impressionists. By Camille Pissarro so were sunset in Rouen and Pont Neuf, Paris, under snow and Édouard Manet boats in Argenteuil in the collection. Other purchases in the interwar period were The Village Fair and Beach in Trouville by Eugène Boudin , The Storm by Millet, Woman and Child in the Garden at Bougival by Berthe Morisot and Madame Zborowska by André Derain .

Against the background of the social problems in Great Britain, Margaret's sister stopped collecting in 1926 because she found it immoral to spend large sums of money on works of art in view of the plight of her compatriots. Margaret Davies followed her sister in this setting, which was made worse by the Great Depression of 1929.

After her sister's death in 1951, Margaret Davies began expanding her art collection again. In addition to the impressionistic view of the village Moret by Alfred Sisley Margaret now acquired increasingly modern art. These included numerous works by now less well-known artists, but also some important paintings with La Ciotat by Othon Friesz , Dorfstrasse by Maurice Utrillo , Sunlight in Vernon by Pierre Bonnard and Regen, Mont Plaisant, Algeria by Albert Marquet . In addition, Margaret Davies acquired English and Welsh works of art during this period. This was increasingly done with advice from the Museum in Cardiff, which came after her death 152 works of art as a donation by Margaret Davies. Margaret Davies, along with her sister Gwendoline and Irish Hugh Lane, was one of the earliest collectors of modern art in Great Britain. Her collecting activity had a great influence on the subsequent generation of collectors in her country, such as Samuel Courtauld .

Painting from the Margaret Davies Collection

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  William Turner:
  The Storm

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  Ernest Meissonier:
  The Piquet Game

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  Édouard Manet:
  Sailing boats in Argenteuil

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  Claude Monet:
  Palazzo Dario, Venice

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 in the BBC Wales (English)