Gwendoline Davies visited the damaged and largely empty French city of Verdun on 9 and 10 March 1917, where she acquired this postcard image as a souvenir. Private collection (Lord Davies) 

The First World War had a profound effect on the lives of Gwendoline and Margaret Davies, two sisters from mid Wales whose gifts and bequests completely transformed the range and quality of Wales's national art collection.

They lost much-loved relatives and served with the Red Cross in France, seeing the destruction first hand. They were deeply conscious of the horrors experienced by both British and French soldiers, and shocked at the suffering of civilian refugees.

While their brother David flung himself into the cause of international peace, the sisters hoped to repair the lives of ex-soldiers traumatized by the war, through education in the crafts and through music. Out of this grew the idea of Gregynog, as a centre for the arts, and for the discussion of social problems.

Bringing Refugee Artists to Wales

On 4 August 1914 Germany invaded Belgium, precipitating the First World War. Over a million Belgians fled their homes.

The Davies family decided that Belgian artists should be brought to Wales, where they could work in safety, and inspire the country's art students. Major Burdon-Evans, their agent, and their friend Thomas Jones journeyed to Belgium where they assembled a group of ninety-one refugees, including the sculptor George Minne, and the painters Valerius de Saedeleer and Gustave van de Woestyne and their families.

All three artists were to spend the rest of the war as refugees, largely dependent on the Davies family for support. While their impact on the arts in Wales was limited, the work of all three was to be profoundly influenced by their Welsh exile.

The Sisters in France, 1916–1918

Initially the sisters undertook charitable work at home in connection with the war. They were keen to do more 'in the way of helping', but few women managed to go out to France. One way of doing so was to volunteer through the London Committee of the French Red Cross.

There was little provision in the French army for the welfare of the ordinary soldier, and the Committee sent women to operate canteens at railway stations, hospitals and transit camps.

In July 1916 Gwendoline was posted to a transit camp near Troyes. Margaret joined the canteen there in June 1917, and her journals record their lives at this period.

The sisters were deeply moved by the stoicism of the ordinary soldiers of the French army and by the suffering of exhausted, sick, and hungry refugees.

Wartime collecting

The sisters sometimes managed to add to their art collection during the First World War. Although wartime travel in France was difficult, trips to Paris on Red Cross business provided Gwendoline with opportunities to visit the Bernheim-Jeune gallery.

She bought a Daumier and a Carrière there in April 1917, and paintings by Renoir, Manet and Monet in December. In February 1918 she bought her two celebrated landscapes by Cézanne, The François Zola Dam and Provençal Landscape, which are among her most important and far-sighted purchases.

In February 1916, Gwendoline Davies spent £2,350 on ten oils and a drawing by Augustus John. Both she and Margaret went on to acquire more works by John, and they collected the work of no other artist on this scale.

Gwendoline was determined that the work of Augustus John be seen at Amgueddfa Cymru, later placing several of her own purchases on loan to the Museum.

Guide to the paintings

Paul Cézanne

(1839–1906), Provençal Landscape, oil on canvas, about 1887–8

Bought by Gwendoline Davies with Cézanne's The François Zola Dam in 1918, this picture cost half as much, £1,250. It was probably painted at his family's property outside Aix-en-Provence. Full of the shimmering colour of the South of France where the sisters had holidayed in 1913–14, it must have seemed a world away from war-time Paris in winter.

Amgueddfa Cymru (Bequest of Gwendoline Davies, 1951) NMW A 2438.

 

Paul Cézanne

(1839–1906), The François Zola Dam, oil on canvas, about 1879

This landscape is one of Gwendoline Davies's greatest pictures, bought in Paris for £2,500 in February 1918. The Troyes canteen was closed for repairs. She was in the city, then under intermittent German bombardment, on Red Cross business. She may have seen it on a previous visit, as in January Margaret had translated from the French the art dealer Ambroise Vollard's anecdotal account of Cézanne's life. Together with Provençal Landscape acquired with it, this was one of the first Cézannes to enter a British collection.

Amgueddfa Cymru (Bequest of Gwendoline Davies, 1951) NMW A 2439.

 

Camille Pissarro

(1831–1903), Sunset, the Port of Rouen (Steamboats), oil on canvas, 1898

Margaret Davies bought several works by Pissarro at the Leicester Galleries, London, in June 1920. This was the most expensive at £550. The previous year she had worked at a canteen in Rouen run by the Scottish Churches Huts Committee.

Amgueddfa Cymru (Bequest of Margaret Davies, 1963) NMW A 2492.

 

After the First World War, Gwendoline and Margaret Davies were determined to help people whose lives had been shattered by the war and to do what they could to improve living conditions at home.

In 1920, they bought Gregynog Hall from their brother, who had bought it as an investment in 1914. Gregynog might have been a quiet retreat to receive company, but the sisters wished it to be a place of use and of beauty that they could share with many for the benefit of others.

The sisters championed many social, economic, educational and cultural initiatives in Wales during the 1920s and ’30s. They hoped that conferences held at Gregynog would go some way towards building a new Wales in the aftermath of the First World War.

Visitors to Gregynog

George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Jones at Gregynog. Private collection (Lord Davies)

A huge range of organisations met at Gregynog. Conferences were attended by eminent national and international educationalists, politicians, and peace and social welfare campaigners.

The magnificent collections at Gregynog were seen by its many visitors. Writing in 1938 Mary Hackett, a visiting Australian, wrote home ‘Did I tell you of the Music Room with its wall hung with priceless pictures, the works of Turner, Monet, Manet and many others’.

The most frequent visitor was Thomas Jones. As Deputy Cabinet Secretary, he knew many prominent figures from politics and the arts. The playwright George Bernard Shaw and Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, were among those for whom he arranged invitations to Gregynog.

Shaw and his wife Charlotte visited in 1930, 1932 and in 1933. Each evening after dinner Shaw read to the assembled company his play On the Rocks. Gwendoline told a guest: ‘Charlotte and G. B. S. came over from Malvern. We enjoyed them immensely. We just let him talk – and we talked to her!’

The Davies sisters and music

Music was a vital part of the sisters’ lives. They received a better musical education than was usual in well-to-do families.

Musical provision in Wales was patchy, and most people’s contact with music was through chapel alone. Although there were music departments at three of the universities, there was a tendency towards insularity and standards of instrumental composition were not high.

The sisters were among a group who wanted to change attitudes and access to music in Wales. They were active in pockets of progressive activity, such as the Welsh Folk Song Society and the University Music Club at Aberystwyth.

The Gregynog Festival

The Music Room. This photograph illustrates the Music Room as used for the summer festivals in the 1930s. Manet’s Rabbit is on the left-hand wall and visitors remember Monet’s water lily paintings and Pissarro’s Pont Neuf here.
Private collection (Lord Davies)

Musical activity at Gregynog reached a peak in the 1930s with the Gregynog Festival of Music and Poetry. The Festival ran annually from 1933 to 1938. It was a three- or four-day affair, with concerts taking place in the 200-seat Music Room. Collections were taken for local causes. The poetry element was considered just as important as the musical.

The festivals played host to important figures of the period, including the composers Ralph Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar, and Gustav Holst, the conductor Adrian Boult, the poet Lascelles Abercrombie and performers including Jelly d’Arnyi and the Rothschild Quartet.

Despite the international flavour of the performers, there was a Welsh emphasis, with many local musicians participating. The programme generally comprised contemporary and not-so-contemporary British music, European chamber classics and a Welsh folk-song element. Choral music dominated, and on every festival Sunday, religious works were programmed.

The end of an era

The 1930s were the heyday of musical activity at Gregynog. The festivals ceased at the outbreak of war in 1939 as the sisters turned their attention to the war effort. The deaths of Walford Davies in 1941, and of Gwendoline ten years later in 1951, had a profound effect on the musical life of Gregynog. Though plans were mooted to transform the Hall into a centre for Welsh music, these never came to fruition.

At his appointment to the post of Gregynog Professor of Music at Aberystwyth in 1954, Ian Parrott resurrected the musical spirit of the Hall by reviving the Festival in 1955. This ran until 1961 and adhered largely to the ethos of the 1930s programmes. In 1988, the Festival was revived once more, this time by the tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson, and continues today under the direction of Rhian Davies, a tangible example of the sisters’ musical legacy in Wales.

Guide to the paintings

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

(1841–1919), La Parisienne, oil on canvas, 1874

Renoir’s La Parisienne, according to Eirene White, ‘hung in the small entrance hall, facing the main door to the Music Room’. The present Lord Davies recalls visiting in about 1960 and seeing the Sisley of Moret (purchased by Margaret that year) and Berthe Morisot’s At Bougival in the drawing room with Derain’s Madame Zborowska over the fireplace.

 

Édouard Manet

(1832–1883), The Rabbit, oil on canvas, 1881

This was originally intended to be part of a decorative cycle and was painted to be viewed at a distance. It was sold after Manet’s death to the dealer Durand-Ruel. It was purchased by Gwendoline Davies from Bernheim-Jeune for £1,000 in 1917. It later hung at Gregynog in the Music Room next to the Effect of Snow at Petit-Montrouge.

Amgueddfa Cymru (Bequest of Gwendoline Davies, 1951) NMWA 2466.

 

Claude Monet

(1840–1926), Water Lilies, oil on canvas, 1905

Monet employed a man to tend the water lily ponds at Giverny. He worked daily cleaning the pond so that Monet could paint the reflections in the water. Gwendoline Davies purchased this work in July 1913. Both sisters were enthusiastic gardeners and they created their own lily pond at Gregynog where Margaret in later years liked to paint.

Amgueddfa Cymru (Bequest of Gwendoline Davies, 1951) NMW A 2484.

 

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), Rain – Auvers, oil on canvas, about 1890

Van Gogh wrote to his brother of ‘the crows flying in circles over the fields’ which made him feel sad and lonely. This work was painted when Van Gogh was staying in Auvers and was being treated for depression. Gwendoline purchased it for £2,020 in 1920.

Amgueddfa Cymru (Bequest of Gwendoline Davies, 1951) NMW A2463.