The Methodist Modern Art Collection in Wales

Introduction

The Inspiration

While words and music have long been seen as integral to Welsh national identity, the same has not been true of the visual arts. Indeed, for centuries, the social make-up of Wales meant that the visual arts were enjoyed almost exclusively by small groups of wealthy individuals. The aristocratic Ladies of Llangollen were famous for their private collection at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as were Margaret and Gwendoline Davies a century later. A wider public was reached with the creation of organisations such as the National Museum of Wales, the National Library of Wales (with its own art collection) and with the expansion of higher education to include the teaching of art. The National Eisteddfod has played its part through its own annual display, now known as Y Lle Celf, which frequently provokes a lively debate on the state of Welsh art. Also important in strengthening the place of the visual arts in Wales has been the increasing international reputation of artists such as David Jones, Gwen John and Ceri Richards. This booklet charts the links between Wales and the Methodist Modern Art Collection - which has been described as ‘the best denominational collection of modern art outside the Vatican’.

The Collection was the initiative, in the early 1960s, of a Methodist layman, Dr John Morel Gibbs. He lived in Penarth, just outside Cardiff, and was Vice-President of the Methodist Conference in 1959. He was very conscious that within the Methodist Church and indeed within Non-conformist Churches in general there was little appreciation of the insights that contemporary artists could bring to the Christian story. He wanted to encourage a more imaginative approach to the

commissioning and buying of paintings, sculpture and church furnishings. It so happened that he knew the Rev. Douglas Wollen who, a few years earlier, had been the minister of Albert Road Methodist Church in Penarth. Aware of Wollen’s interest in the visual arts, John Gibbs invited him to create a collection of contemporary religious works of art. Starting work in 1962, Douglas Wollen visited London galleries, a great many exhibitions and contacted a range of artists whose work he knew and felt might be appropriate. Some purchases were made on what he described as his ‘Bond Street Crawl’ when he was in London for Methodist meetings. Others were purchased directly from artists. The First Works

Among the early acquisitions was The Cross over the City (shown left), a polyester, brass and mosaic relief panel created by Michael Edmonds (1926-2014). Edmonds served as a ‘Bevin Boy’ in the South Wales coalfields and undertook his first art studies in Cardiff. In 1958 he was commissioned to produce a mural for Llandough Hospital on the theme of coal-mining. Wollen bought The Cross over the City directly from the artist in 1963. From a distance, it looks like an aerial view of traffic on a major road, crossing another road or railway cutting,

Michael Edmonds (1926-2014), The Cross over the City. 1962. Polyester, brass and mosaic relief panel. 150cm by 90cm. 3

Ceri Richards (1903-1971), The Supper at Emmaus. 1958. Gouache. 40cm by 40cm.

both passing through a rigidly uniform estate of urban housing blocks. Another of Edmonds’ relief crosses has hung for many years at Trinity Methodist Church in Penarth, and prior to that, also in Penarth, in the chapel at the Methodist International House of South Wales. In the same year, 1963, Wollen purchased four aluminium reliefs from a set of Stations of the Cross by Frank Roper: Jesus meets his Blessed Mother; Jesus falls for the Second Time; The Deposition and The Entombment. Roper, a Yorkshireman who taught sculpture at the Cardiff School (later College) of Art, produced two early sets of Stations for Cardiff churches – one for St Martin’s, Roath and the other for St Saviour’s, Splott. The four reliefs in the Methodist Collection are related to the St Saviour’s Stations. Some fine examples of his work 4

can be found in Llandaff Cathedral (part of an exciting commission in company with Jacob Epstein and John Piper) and St David’s Cathedral, Pembrokeshire. One of the best known names in the Collection today is that of Ceri Richards, born in Dunvant, Swansea in 1903. The Supper at Emmaus (shown left) was bought by Wollen directly from the artist in 1962. It is a small gouache study, inscribed along the bottom edge: ‘Drawing of Altar Piece - The Supper at Emmaus, Chapel of St Edmund Hall, Oxford University’. The altar piece itself is well worth a visit! Euryl Stevens, born in Tonypandy in 1939, was the youngest of the artists originally represented in the Methodist Collection. She painted The Raising of Lazarus in 1964 which Wollen purchased from her directly through the Royal Academy Schools. The influence of her Rhondda Valley background can be sensed in her paintings of industrial landscapes and in The Preacher, her triptych of a Welsh chapel. The First Travelling Exhibition

Under the title The Church and the Artist – contemporary paintings on Christian themes a total of 38 works toured between 1963 and 1965. They were seen by over 107,000 people at 29 venues. From Plymouth to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, from London to Preston, these included major art galleries such as the Walker in Liverpool and the Birmingham and Manchester City Art Galleries. The National Museum of Wales showed it at their out-station, Turner House, in Penarth, where an interesting

diary entry records ‘two people rushed in and out in umbrage, about, apparently, the combination of modern art and religion’ (14 March 1965). Generally, the exhibitions were well received, particularly by the public and local press, though the interest of the national art press was not engaged.

National Museum’s own pictures, the Museum’s Registrar, Tim Egan, hung the Collection in the Turner House, Penarth. Here it formed part of the Penarth Festival of Christian Art, along with additional loans of work by Frank Brangwyn, David Jones and Stanley Spencer.

School Loans

The Capel-y-ffin Connection

It is clear from the earliest publicity material that the exhibition was aimed at churches, universities, colleges and schools, although the initial 29 exhibition venues included only one school, one college and one church. A school loan scheme saw one work, Cain and Abel by John Reilly, go to Rydal School in Colwyn Bay – and stay there until the summer of 1991, ‘… because of my friendship with John Gibbs’, wrote the headmaster. Generally the loans to schools and colleges were for much shorter periods, works being lent individually or in twos or threes, as an aid to the teaching of RE. Few of the establishments made as full or effective use of the works as had been hoped.

In more recent years, the Collection has acquired works by a number of artists, namely Eric Gill, David Jones and Philip Hagreen, who were part of the renowned Guild of St Joseph & St Dominic. The Guild was founded in 1921 as a Roman Catholic community of work, faith and domestic life, based on the idea of the medieval guild. After establishing the community at Ditchling in Sussex, the Guild moved to Capel-y-ffin in the Black Mountains. It was during their time at the Benedictine monastery there that Eric Gill designed the Gill Sans typeface. The Collection owns a tiny watercolour on paper, Annunciation, which he painted in 1912. Three Kings by David Jones (18951974) (shown on p.6) is an engraved woodblock, originally made for a Christmas card while Jones was living at the Capely-ffin community. The local mountains feature prominently as a backdrop to Bethlehem illuminated by the rays of the star. The work came into the Collection from Monnow Valley Arts Centre, a gallery and sculpture garden at the foot of the Black Mountains. This was the initiative of John Newton Gibbs, eldest son of John Morel Gibbs and Sheila Gibbs. John, who lives near Crickhowell in Powys, became

Rescue!

In 1990, the National Museum of Wales rescued the Collection when the works were brought to Cardiff from Southlands College in London. Initially Southlands had been a suitable venue with a chaplain who was keen to use the Collection in teaching. However, over the years there were many changes of staff, and four pictures became water-damaged in a flood at the college. Together with some of the

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Chair of the Collection’s trustees in 1998, when a team of managing trustees was appointed by the Methodist Council. The brief is ‘…to care for, develop and promote the Collection in order to encourage people to enter into conversations about God in Christ in the contemporary world…’ A montage of prints around the theme of the Nativity was given to the trustees of the Collection in 2006. The gift was from a relative of the artist, Philip Hagreen (18901988) who, in 1920, was a founder member of the Society of Wood Engravers. He joined Gill at Capel-y-ffin in 1924, sharing a workshop with David Jones. However, the climate proved too harsh for him and he moved to Lourdes with his family.

Commissioned for the Collection

An Art-Accustomed Eye

In 2009 the trustees commissioned Welsh artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins (born in Newport in 1951) to tackle – in a contemporary way a subject that was lacking in the Collection’s canon. Christ writes in the Dust – the Woman taken in Adultery (shown right) was accepted into the Collection in early 2011. It owes its origin to the wish of two benefactors to sponsor a work demonstrating the readiness of Jesus to stand against, or go beyond, much Old Testament teaching. The artist has ‘frozen’ the story at the point where Christ distracts the crowd’s attention from the woman to himself by writing in the dust. Yet he is not the obvious and immediate centre of attention; viewers have to turn their heads almost upside down to see him the right way up. ‘They probably will have looked at the painting quite hard before they upend their heads to see his face,’ writes Hicks-Jenkins, ‘and by then they will have already entered the world of the painting and have become at least a little accustomed to it, and to him.’ Soon after its completion, this painting appeared in a major retrospective exhibition of the artist’s work at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

This leaflet would not be complete without reference to the exhibition celebrating the art legacy and vision of John and Sheila Gibbs. In 2004, An Art-Accustomed Eye was staged at the National Museum & Galleries of Wales. This revealed how John and Sheila Gibbs created one of the first confident collections of contemporary Welsh art. Several of the works from the Methodist Collection were shown as part of this, alongside other works by Ceri Richards, John Piper and Lucian Freud. In the bilingual catalogue accompanying the exhibition, author Peter Wakelin writes of John and Sheila Gibbs: ‘Few have matched this willingness to give or lend works outside a gallery setting in order that others can accustom their eyes to art.’ Their legacy continues, not least through the ongoing work of John Newton Gibbs, still Chair of the Collection’s trustees and actively involved in the care and well-being of the Collection, including the acquisition of new works.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins (b. 1951), Christ writes in the Dust – the Woman taken in Adultery. 2011. Acrylic on panel. 82cm by 62cm.

David Jones (1895-1974), Three Kings. 1925. Engraved woodblock. 10cm by 8cm. 6

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Lluniwyd y daflen gan Sarah Middleton ar ran Ymddiriedolwyr y Casgliad Methodistaidd o Gelfyddyd Gyfoes mewn partneriaeth â Wales Synod a Synod Cymru. Cefnogwyd gan Rhwydwaith Dysgu Disgyblion a Gweinidogaethau yr Eglwys Fethodistaidd. Cyfieithiad Cymraeg gan Delyth Wyn Davies.

Ceir rhagor am hanes y Casgliad yn Catalogue of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art gan Roger Wollen (2003) ac yn A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection (2010). Daw peth o destun y llyfryn hwn o’r cyhoeddiadau hyn. Gweler hefyd www.methodist.org. uk/artcollection Cydnabyddiaethau pellach: Peter Wakelin, Celf drwy Lygad Craff – John Gibbs a Gwerthfawrogi Celf yng Nghymru 1945-1996, (2004), Amgueddfa Cymru; John N. Gibbs, nodiadau o ddarlith i Gymdeithas Gelfyddyd Gyfoes Cymru; Andrew Parry, Pennaeth y Gymraeg a Materion Cymreig, Prifysgol Glyndŵr.

Andrew Parry, Head of Welsh Language and Affairs, Glyndŵr University.

Hawlfraint Ymddiriedolwyr Dibenion yr Eglwys Fethodistaidd (TMCP) 2014.

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Produced by Cultureshock Media Designer: Helen McFarland www.cultureshockmedia.co.uk

Images of four of the works from the Methodist Modern Art Collection are reproduced in this booklet courtesy of the Trustees of the Collection and copyright TMCP. ISBN 0-9538135-4-1 Copyright Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes (TMCP) 2014.

John N. Gibbs, notes from lecture to the Contemporary Art Society of Wales;

ISBN 0-9538135-4-1

With further acknowledgments to: Peter Wakelin, An Art-Accustomed Eye – John Gibbs and art appreciation in Wales 1945-1996, (2004), National Museum of Wales;

Atgynhyrchir y pedwar delwedd o’r gweithiau o’r Casgliad Methodistaidd o Gelfyddyd Gyfoes yn y llyfryn hwn trwy garedigrwydd Ymddiriedolwyr y Casgliad, hawlfraint TMCP.

Leaflet compiled by Sarah Middleton for the Trustees of the Methodist Modern Art Collection in partnership with Wales Synod and Synod Cymru. Supported by the Discipleship & Ministries Learning Network of the Methodist Church. Welsh translation by Delyth Wyn Davies.

More on the history of the Collection can be found in Roger Wollen’s Catalogue of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art (2003) and A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection (2010). Some text in this leaflet is drawn from these publications. See also www.methodist.org. uk/artcollection Cynhyrchwyd gan Cultureshock Media Cynllunydd: Helen McFarland www.cultureshockmedia.co.uk 8