National Museum Cardiff

The National Museum Cardiff ( Welsh : Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd ) is an arts, crafts, archeology and natural history museum in the Welsh capital, Cardiff . It is part of the decentralized National Museum Wales , which includes six other museums in different locations.

history

When it was founded in 1907, it had been collecting for 25 years . A predecessor institution under the name Cardiff Museum of Natural History, Arts and Antiquities opened its first premises in 1882 in eleven holding cells of the Cardiff courthouse. The plans for a new building of their own dragged on for many years before the foundation stone of today's museum building was laid in 1912. Due to the economic effects of the First World War , the building designed by architects Arnold Dunbar Smith and Cecil Brewer did not open until 1927. The complete completion took until 1932.

Collections

National Museum of Wales (Cardiff): Neolithic flint club head (3,000 BC - 2,500 BC), from Maesmor, Denbighshire.

Since its inception, the National Museum has housed very different collections under one roof. Natural history has been part of the museum's departments from the start. It has an extensive collection of zoological and botany objects from both the British Isles and around the world. The field of entomology alone counts 700,000 objects, around half of which are native species. The archeology department houses finds from the early history of Wales, Roman and Celtic times, and the Middle Ages. This section also includes a numismatic collection, of which 1,200 copies from antiquity to the present can be seen in the permanent exhibition. A 1969 Crown of the Princes of Wales is on loan from the museum .

Arts and crafts

In addition to its own collection activities, four significant donations have contributed to the institution's outstanding reputation since it was founded. In the field of handicrafts, these are the porcelain and ceramic collections of Wilfred De Winton and Ernest Morton Nance. The focus of the Wilfred De Winton Foundation is primarily on German porcelain, particularly from the Meissen porcelain factory . The inventory of porcelain from the factories in Ansbach , Berlin , Höchst , Ludwigsburg and Nymphenburg is also extensive . Exemplary pieces from other European manufacturers complete this collection. The Ernest Morton Nance collection, exhibited in the museum since 1952, focuses on ceramics and porcelain from Welsh production. With more than 1,500 individual pieces, this foundation - supplemented by other exhibits from museum holdings - documents the traditional production of this handicraft in Wales from 1764 to 1922. The department for contemporary handicrafts with numerous modern ceramics completes this collection area.

Watkin Williams-Wynn was one of the earliest major art collectors in Wales. In addition to handicrafts, some old master paintings came from his possession to the museum. In addition to two family portraits by Joshua Reynolds , this collection includes pictures by Pompeo Batoni and Anton Raphael Mengs . Other Old Master paintings in the National Museum Wales are by artists such as Giovanni Antonio Canal , Jan van de Cappelle , Aelbert Jacobsz. Cuyp , Dosso Dossi , Anthonis van Dyck , Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout , Francesco Guardi , Giovanni Francesco Barbieri , Mathieu Le Nain , Palma il Vecchio , Nicolas Poussin , Salvator Rosa , Peter Paul Rubens , Frans Snyders , Bernardo Strozzi , Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo and with six pictures a small group of works by Melchior de Hondecoeter . In addition, there are old English paintings by well-known artists such as John Constable , John Hoppner , Godfrey Kneller , Peter Lely , Henry Raeburn , George Romney and Joseph Wright of Derby , which can be seen in the museum as examples. In addition, the National Museum Cardiff owns three works each by William Hogarth and Thomas Lawrence and five paintings by Thomas Gainsborough .

The museum received the most important international collection from the Welsh sisters Gwendoline Davies (1952) and Margaret Davies (1963). The focus is on 19th century French painting, but other works can also be found in this foundation. The two Davies sisters alone brought six paintings by William Turner into the museum. The two sisters were among the first British collectors to acquire Impressionist and Late Impressionist works . The highlights of this foundation are, for example, several paintings by Claude Monet , each of which includes three views of Venice and three water lily pictures, as well as a picture from the series with the motif of Rouen Cathedral . In addition to a still life typical of the artist, Paul Cézanne shows two landscapes of his Provencal homeland. The most famous picture in the museum is La Parisienne by Pierre-Auguste Renoir , of which the Davies sisters bequeathed two more pictures to the museum. In addition, Regen - Auvers is one of the last paintings Vincent van Gogh created before his death. The still life The Hare and two landscape paintings by Édouard Manet as well as other landscape paintings by Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro also came to the museum from these foundations . The painters Berthe Morisot , Albert Marquet , Adolphe Monticelli , Henri Moret , Ernest Meissonier , Alfred Stevens , Anton Mauve , John Singer Sargent , Maurice Utrillo , Pierre Bonnard and James McNeill Whistler are also represented in these foundations. Larger groups of works by Eugène Boudin , Eugène Carrière , Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot , Honoré Daumier , Jean-François Millet are also part of the Davies legacy.