Episode 1 Framing Wales

100 years ago, a young Welsh painter spotted a spectacular view

of the mountains of North Wales

from an escarpment near Blaenau Ffestiniog.

This series on art in Wales in the 20th Century

begins with Augustus John, seen in his time as a trailblazer

for those artists who were grappling with the tumultuous 20th Century.

Throughout that century, Welsh artists produced work

that sometimes reflected and sometimes challenged

the Wales that they'd emerged from.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be one of those artists,

and after school here in Aberdare,

I went to Hornsey College of Art in London

and straight into the art college revolt of 1968.

All in agreement,

I propose that we now march down to Woodgreen Civic Centre.

My time at Hornsey was filled with revolution about everything.

Especially about the way art was taught.

Later, as minister for the arts, I hit the headlines

when I criticised what I saw as the emptiness of some modern art.

Now that I've retired from Parliament,

I'm able to spend more time at my home in Pontypridd.

This has given me the chance to start painting again

and I jumped at the opportunity to work on this series

on the story of art in Wales in the 20th Century.

In this first programme, we'll be looking at the way Welsh artists

responded to a dream of national revival

that emerged at the beginning of the century.

While some ignored it, for others it provided inspiration.

But soon, the threat of world war would loom over the nation

and artists would find themselves having to address a quite different challenge

from the one that they'd expected.

Born in 1878 in this street in Tenby,

Augustus John hated the place that he grew up in.

He described it as a kind of mortuary where everything was dead.

For his sister, Gwen, too, this place had unhappy memories.

She remembers conversations that were stifled at the dining table

and where she was forced to eat rice puddings that she hated.

But this house where they grew up

nurtured two very remarkable talents

and that was obvious, even in their teenage years.

Just around the corner at the Tenby Museum,

I found self portraits of them both.

Augustus, supremely confident. Gwen, more tentative.

Their mother died young when Gwen was only eight-years-old.

There's something especially poignant about this work by Gwen,

painted in 1897 of a mother and daughter walking on a Tenby beach.

The daughter looking earnestly at the mother.

I tried to work out just where Gwen John had painted that scene

and at that very spot was a mother with her daughters.

What do you think? I'm trying to line this picture up

with a painting that's in the gallery over there

that's painted by Gwen John.

She painted it when she was about 20 and it's of a mother and a daughter.

We're trying to figure out exactly where she painted it from.

-Can you see...

-Isn't that a wall in the foreground?

No, it's the beach. And see the houses?

-Do you reckon that's about it?

-Pretty close.

I thought you were doing the lifeboat stations.

There we are. It just shows you, doesn't it?!

For me, Tenby has lost none of its charm.

But it had little hold on Gwen and Augustus.

Augustus referred to it as smugly insignificant.

When brother and sister were still in their teens,

they took the train to London to become students at the Slade School of Art.

Gwen hardly ever returned to her birth place

and never painted it again.

The Glynn Vivian Gallery in Swansea

holds a couple of paintings by Gwen John

and Karen McKinnon, a curator here, led me to one of them.

It's very typical of Gwen's work.

A three quarter portrait, usually of women, but sometimes...

-Very muted colours, very limited palette.

-Yes. Very limited palette.

Who would she have learned that off? Or was that part of her genius?

She drew and painted from a very early age so she would have evolved into this style.

But she was also influenced by Japanese prints as well.

Particularly in this one, you can see,

because the line is so fine and minimal, it's almost cartoon like.

I always think with her work, it's the look on the face as well.

There's a kind of a gaze and Gwen John has written quite a lot

about how she was interested in a more interior life.

She was quite happy to spend long periods of time on he own.

She was very contemplative.

When the National Museum of Wales

decided to re-think its Cardiff gallery lay out last year,

it had no doubt at all that Gwen John was worthy of a place here.

As curator Beth McIntyre sees it, Gwen John's move to Paris

doesn't weaken her right to be seen as a major Welsh artist.

Indeed, that her work deserves to hang alongside the best work

by French artists of the same era.

We had a temporary exhibition where we showed her work by French artists

and specifically alongside Rodin sculptures

because she was Rodin's model and also his lover for a very long time.

So in that context, we did show it with the French side.

But she continued to exhibit in Britain.

She sent paintings from France to exhibit at the New English Art Club.

-That was in London?

-In London, yes.

And she continued to correspond with her colleagues from the Slade School of Art.

So she knew what was happening here.

Beth McIntyre made a convincing argument for Gwen John,

but I was less convinced about the case

for another Welsh painter's right to be exhibited here.

Amongst the Welsh painters that you've got is Christopher Williams.

Does he deserve to be in amongst these paintings?

I think he certainly deserves a place within this gallery

which is looking at the British reaction to impressionism

and the artists who were exhibiting nationally at the time.

Yes, he was one of the leading figures, certainly in Welsh art,

and possibly within British art in London.

He was a figure who was very keen to promote people who came from Wales.

Whilst Gwen John was wrapped up in her love affair in Paris with the sculptor, Rodin,

other Welsh artists were committing themselves strongly to Wales.

I hadn't even heard of Christopher Williams

when I started work on this series.

But Maesteg hasn't forgotten him.

The house where he was brought up has long gone.

It's now the premises of Maesteg Nails.

But there's a plaque above it to make his birth place.

In the town hall, they proudly display

five of Christopher Williams' paintings,

including one of his own son dressed up as a judge

and another of his father, the local grocer.

Does this work suggest a neglected Welsh talent?

Robert Mayrick, the head of the art school at Aberystwyth University thinks so.

He took me to see Williams' Wales Awakening

at Caernarfon Council's offices.

He wanted an art form that was accessible to the masses.

He would talk about art for the masses and not only for the classes.

He would make appeals to the mine owners and politicians of the day

to help to make that happen.

To commission works of art?

To commission works of art, to bring in art to Wales.

Great art that would inspire the best in indigenous Welsh artists.

He's using a technique and he's creating an image

which I find rather reactionary.

Is he painting in this way

because he believed it served a particular purpose?

Yes. He wanted to speak to the people of Wales

and he wanted to keep the symbolism as simple as possible.

There's not a great deal of symbolism in there,

but what you have is this figure

which represents Wales awakening to the light, the new dawn.

He was working at a remarkable time in Wales.

A political and cultural revolution.

It was quite unlikely that there'd ever been one before.

We had our National Library of Wales. That was under construction.

The National Museum of Wales.

All the constituent universities of Wales were in place by this time.

So there was a lot happening and there were a lot of opportunities

for artists who rise on the tide of interest in things Welsh.

A belief in Wales awakening was part of a nationalist upsurge

throughout Europe in the early years of the 20th Century

and found expression in the national Pantheon within Cardiff City Hall.

The place of honour went to the statue of Dewi Sant, St David,

sculpted by Goscombe John, a revered figure in Wales at the time.

The rest of the Welsh heroes were carved by English sculptors.

The Pantheon was opened by David Lloyd George MP,

who, for a time, had become strongly identified

with Cymru Fydd, Wales To Be.

A feature film on Lloyd George made a few years later,

caught the mood of excitement that had spread from Caernarfon

throughout much of Wales.

By 1910, some in Wales were demanding home rule.

Far away in London, another artist, proud of his Welsh descent,

had picked up on the mood of national fervour.

David Jones, admitted to Camberwell Arts School at the age of 16,

was fired by Welsh history.

His father was born here.

One of his earliest memories was hearing his father sing Welsh songs

and he identified very clearly with Wales.

I met Anne Price Owen, the director of the David Jones Society,

at Capel-y-Ffin, where David Jones later made his home.

The whole Welshness, the myth, the legends, the Mabinogion

and all the mutability and metamorphosis

that takes place in those legends and so on,

all somehow informed his whole psyche, his whole consciousness.

He had a romantic vision of Wales, there's no doubt about that.

This was the Wales he saw. The land of myths and legends.

Like the English sculptors at Cardiff City Hall,

David Jones had a rosily romantic view of Welsh history.

But where is industrial Wales?

In the early years of the 20th Century,

film makers were including coal miners and coal sifters as subjects

But very few painters included industrial scenes

and fewer still industrial workers.

This despite the fact that industry was such a dominant feature

of the Welsh landscape at the time and despite the fact

that then, as now, it could be visually spectacular.

Visually, one of the special things about Wales

is this mix of dramatic landscape.

Of hillsides and mountains and deep valleys.

And right up against it, you've got industry.

Coal mines, steel works, slate quarries.

These are also visually very striking.

But up until the First World War,

artists didn't seem particularly interested in industry.

When Augustus John came back to Wales,

he didn't come here to South Wales, he went to North Wales.

TRAIN WHISTLE

In 1911, he came to stay near the Arenig mountains in southern Snowdonia

with his Welsh friend, James Dickson Innes.

He was attracted by Innes' eccentricity,

painted him in an appropriately bohemian posture

and was influenced by his bold way with landscapes.

But Innes was a sick man, suffering from TB,

and when Augustus John moved further west, Innes didn't come with him.

Augustus had little time for the people of Wales,

referring to Welsh ignorance and civility,

but was inspired by its mountains.

I have always loved climbing, especially in Snowdonia,

and can readily understand why this part of Wales attracted him.

TRIUMPHANT PIANO MUSIC

Augustus John came here to Tanygrisiau,

just near Blaenau Ffestiniog.

When he was here, he painted a painting called Welsh Mountains.

This is the exact spot, I think, that he painted it from.

He lived in a cottage, the ruins of which are just there,

and behind him was a working quarry, a slate quarry. Vibrant industry.

He didn't seem interested in it, he was more interested in the wonderful landscape.

And who can blame him on a day like this?

PIANO MUSIC

Soon after he had graduated from art school,

Augustus John's work was selling well.

A style more flamboyant than that of his sister was proving popular among potential patrons.

-The Tutor is so different to Gwen John's, immediately.

-It couldn't be more different.

The thing about Augustus is he painted in so many different ways.

He changed his style, he changed his colour palette,

he sometimes did portraiture, he sometimes did many figures,

or they'd reference mythology...

Why do you think two young people from Tenby end up painting in such different ways?

I mean, maybe going back to personality and the way they lived their lives as well.

He was a very flamboyant character, you know.

He did hang out with lots of people and party much more.

Maybe this is reflected in his painting as well.

They were both in their formative period, learning to become artists

around the time of the First World War.

There were artistic influences flying everywhere across Europe at the time.

Very revolutionary things going on.

Would they have been like any other pair of artists,

and have been influenced by all of those styles, or is there something about them,

because they came from Wales, which made them different to their contemporaries?

Like all artists at that time, they would have been influenced by all of those styles flying around.

They both treat that very, very differently.

And whereas Gwen John pares that down, perhaps we can say Augustus John was much more experimental

and changes his style.

I don't think that would be because they're from Wales.

I think that would be something influencing all artists.

To some, the investiture of the Prince of Wales

was an event of huge national significance.

By 1911, Lloyd George was the Chancellor of the Exchequer,

and made sure the event he'd devised would happen at Caernarfon Castle,

at the heart of his constituency.

He also made sure that he would chose the artist who would record the event for posterity.

It would be the man who he considered to be the greatest artist Wales had ever produced,

Christopher Williams.

But by this time, film cameras were there to provide a precise record of the event.

What could a very traditional artist add to the film version?

The strange thing, of course, for a boy from Maesteg;

a Socialist, somebody who'd joined the Fabian Society, to want to do, is it? To mix with this lot?

It's something he really wanted to be a part of, to further his career.

We must remember he wasn't teaching then.

He was solely relying on the sales from portrait commissions.

He didn't sell many landscapes during his lifetime. He didn't exhibit many.

The income came from portrait commissions.

Here you have all the great and good of Wales and beyond, all lined up.

Some of them regarded as very dodgy characters indeed in Maesteg, where he came from.

How much was he torn, do you think, about the people he mixed with, painted and sought commissions from?

I think he would have been really quite torn.

On the other hand, he did see it as an opportunity, I'm sure,

to have his views listened to, to be able to speak to people of influence

who were in a position to make things happen in Wales.

-Through his connections-

-He had powerful friends.

He had powerful connections, by this time.

Through his friendships, we see David Lloyd George, there,

he was about to paint his portrait in his regalia...

Which he's wearing, of course, in this picture.

An incredible uniform.

He looks like a Hollywood Ruritania.

It is. It was a spectacle, a major event in Wales,

and Christopher Williams very much wanted to be a part of that.

Christopher Williams made other portraits of his increasingly important patron.

Augustus John's portrayal was less pompous.

Within three years of the Caernarfon play-acting,

the Welsh wizard was having to deal with the harsh reality of World War.

Most people in Wales, and most artists, responded to the call to arms with enthusiasm.

This is a First World War re-enactment at Detling in Kent,

where members of the 10th Essex, along with brother groups

from France and Germany, meticulously recreate warfare in the trenches.

But it can only hint at the horrors of the reality of that war,

and the huge impact it had on each of the Welsh artists we've featured on this programme.

David Jones was rejected by a section of the British Army

called the Artists Rifles,

but seized the opportunity to assert his Welsh identity by joining the Welch Fusiliers.

He remained a private soldier throughout the war,

often sketching his fellow Tommies during the long period of waiting.

Years later, he wrote about it in a remarkable prose poem,

called In Parenthesis.

"Night begotten fear left them frail,

"Nor was the waking day much cheer for them.

"They felt with each moment's more ample light

"But a measuring, a nearing only of the noon-day hour.

"When the Nessian trouble comes walking."

BATTLE NOISE

When he was in the battlefields,

he realised that the whole slaughter and carnage

and the wastefulness of war took hold of him.

It taught him about the human spirit,

all of the goodness that engages with the human spirit,

but also, of course, the rather more malignant and malevolent qualities of mankind,

in terms of seeing the wholesale slaughter,

not just of the men themselves but to the creatures that were killed.

He has a very compassionate drawing of rats, for instance,

which have been shot when they'd been pulling down the trenches.

Augustus John, accorded the status of war artist and Major with Canadian forces in the Somme,

also painted soldiers during the endless waiting at the front.

He took the opportunity to visit his sister, Gwen, in Paris.

Her beloved Rodin had died during the war

and by now she had become a devout Catholic, calling herself God's Little Artist.

Her subject matter was almost exclusively confined

to the nuns in the nearby convent.

Check your weapons and ammunition.

Augustus John had returned to the front,

the only British officer allowed to wear a beard, apart from the King.

He then disgraced himself. Though close to enemy lines,

he got into a fight with a fellow officer and was sent home.

David Jones remained to hear the terrifying order to go over the top,

and to witness the clash that was to devastate the Welch Fusiliers.

The Battle of Mametz Wood.

Later he wrote of the terror it inspired.

"Racked out to another turn of the screw,

"The acceleration heightens.

"You have not capacity for fear,

"Only the limbs are leaden.

"To negotiate the slope and rifles all out of balance.

"Clumsy with long auxiliary steel five times the regulation weight.

"It bitches the aim, as well."

Four hundred Fusiliers died in just one day.

David Jones was himself wounded.

Frontline soldiers like Jones had no opportunity to paint the battles in which they fought,

but Lloyd George's admiration for the work of Christopher Williams

led to a commission to record the slaughter of Mametz Wood in paint.

Although not an official war artist, he was given permission to visit the western front,

and his preparatory oil sketch is, in many ways,

more striking than the finished work.

The finished work now hangs in the Fusiliers Museum in Caernarfon Castle.

The painting at Mametz Wood, I think, is about the theatricality of war, the spectacle of war.

It's full of dynamism and adventure.

There's a lot happening.

It's very much about the theatre, it's like a great set.

"Small, drab, bundled pawn several made effort, moved in tenuous line.

"If you looked behind, the next wave came slowly,

"As successive serfs creep in to dissipate on flat shore.

"And to your front, stretched long laterally and receded deeply,

"The dark wood."

Long after the war was over, David Jones, who had always longed to strengthen his Welsh identity,

came to Tenby and painted a view of it, just as Gwen John had done, 30 years earlier.

But the war had brought about a huge change is society,

and therefore in those artists who reflected that society,

especially so in Wales, where a new generation of artists was emerging.

A generation determined that industrial Wales,

and those who lived and worked in it,

would no longer be ignored.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.

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