David Jones 1895 - 1974: A Map of the Artist’s Mind
- Artist: David Jones
- Published: 1995
- Publisher: Lund Humphries/ National Museum of Wales, London
- Edition: First
- Format: Paperback
- Height: 26.5cm
- Pages: 64
- Illustrations: 8 colour and 64 b&w images
£16.99
Add to basketDavid Jones 1895 - 1974: A Map of the Artist’s Mind
The work of British painter and writer David Jones (1895–1974) is complex and intricate, his themes multifarious. Published to accompany a major centenary exhibition, this beautifully illustrated new book provides an overview of Jones's life and work. In his accompanying essay 'Portrait of a Maker', the artist and writer Merlin James approaches Jones's work with the fresh perceptions of a younger generation. He examines the artist's prints and text-related images, his landscapes and seascapes, still-lifes, portraits and mythological subjects, and in contrast to previous literature on Jones, focuses on close individual analysis of key works, such as The Garden Enclosed (1924), Human Being (1931), Manawydan's Glass Door (1932), Briar Cup (1932) and Trystan ac Essyllt (c.1962). Inviting the reader to experience the paintings visually, James opens up the world of David Jones to new resources of meaning, revealing psychological dimensions which illuminate details of the artist's life and character. In addition, the book includes reminiscences from some of those who knew Jones personally: Nest Cleverdon, Arthur Giardelli and Kathleen Raine. With its combination of personal memories and James's innovative approach to the works, this book sets out to renew critical awareness of David Jones for the new audience his work will find in the twenty-first century.
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Artists Biography
(b Brockley, Kent, 1 Nov 1895; d Harrow, nr London, 28 Oct 1974). English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, illustrator and poet. His creative life was largely determined by two experiences. During World War I he served on the Western Front with the 15th Royal Welch Fusiliers, an event that he regarded as epic and imbued with religious, moral and mythic overtones, in which Divine Grace manifested a continual presence, an approach to thinking about the war distilled in the structure of his epic poem In Parenthesis (London, 1937). The second experience, related to the first, was his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1921. This immediately led him to join Eric Gill’s community at Ditchling, Sussex, where he was a postulant in the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, after having spent three fruitless years at the Westminster School of Art, London, where he had been taught by the English painters Walter Bayes (1869–1956) and Bernard Meninsky (1891–1950) and occasionally by Walter Sickert.
