The Art and Faith of David Jones: Sacredness in the Making - by Iain McKillop
The work of Anglo-Welsh Roman Catholic painter and poet, David Jones [1895–1974] has intrigued me and developed as one of my passions over 45 years, (even though a lot of his books are really difficult to understand, replete with now largely unfamiliar classical, liturgical, mythological or literary allusions and references). I cannot claim to have a deep understanding of his art but, over the years, I have collected and tried to read most of the books by and about him and I have been fortunate enough to collect several of his wood engravings, as well as one of his original wood-engraving blocks. I first encountered his art while studying Art History and English Literature at university. He was not at the time, understandably, the subject of either course, but a series of serendipitous events drew his work to my attention. After his death in 1974 a retrospective exhibition toured Britain, including Manchester Cathedral. I saw a tiny poster for this while walking through St Anne's Square on an afternoon between lectures and recognised the name from a paperback I had recently enjoyed. I wandered in, picked up a leaflet, was immediately fascinated and gradually became hooked! It's strange how things that happen by 'accident' may work together at the right time to transform your understanding and ideas. This has continued over the years.
In Dorset the summer before some college friends and I camped near Chesil Beach and I had found in a second-hand bookshop, a copy of his easiest-to-read book 'In Parenthesis', as well as Thomas Traherne's 'Centuries of Meditation', which began another fascination with Traherne’s writing. I'd heard of neither author before, but they became my intense study for the rest of the summer, and have been among my favourite books ever since. I bought my first print by Jones similarly by serendipity. A former colleague owned it and wanted to sell it. I jumped at the chance as it was an artists' proof of one of the ‘Deluge’ wood engravings – my favourites among his works. Since then I have managed to collect the whole series, which I believe are his most accomplished engravings. Several years later I became close friends with the painter Kate Green, daughter of the Royal Academician Anthony Green. Kate's then-husband, Andy, taught at the time at Harrow School and they lived in the house in Harrow where David Jones had lived previously.
This series of coincidences provided the context in which I came to discover and explore David Jones, but my fascination with him developed mostly from finding his work enigmatic and challenging. Certain works like the wood engravings, In Parenthesis and essays in Epoch and Artist were immediately attractive and meaningful. His writings and watercolours, draw me in more by a process akin to osmosis or hypnotism. They attract the senses and feel spiritually meaningful but do not immediately communicate their meaning and are not conventionally ‘beautiful’. I have had to work at appreciating them, recognising that Jones’s ideas, images and thoughts contain truths that I have never found expressed in other authors or artist’s work in any similar way. From them I sense a deeper feeling of being part of the past than even William Blake, Samuel Palmer, or the English Neo-Romantics who were Jones’s contemporaries. He has a more subtle aesthetic sensitivity than many of the modernist artists and writers who influenced his time, even if he is more obscure.
In his poem ‘A, a, a, Domine Deus’ David Jones encouraged us to work at the comprehension of things which we do not understand. If we ignore what we find hard to comprehend because something is new, challenging, culturally different or unfamiliar, we may miss meanings and encounters that could enhance and enlighten our lives and thinking:
“I have been on my guard
not to condemn the unfamiliar.
For it is easy to miss Him
at the turn of a civilisation.”
BIOGRAPHY
Walter David Jones was born on 1 November 1895 in Arabin Road, Brockley, Kent, now in the London suburbs. The family later moved nearby to Howson Road. His Welsh father from Flintshire, worked as a printer's overseer for the Christian Herald Press. David’s mother Alice, a Londoner, also worked for the press, though there is little to suggest that these connections influenced David’s later work as a Fine-Print-maker. David had two siblings: Harold (who died of tuberculosis at the age of 19) and Alice. James, David’s father instilled in the young boy “a passionate conviction that I belonged to my father’s nation”, even in his English suburban surroundings. As a young child he drew profusely, (several of his early drawings survive, particularly of animals: ‘Dancing Bear’ and ‘The Lion’(1902) are among his most memorable. He would later often visit London Zoo to draw.) As a youth he was also devoted to reading history, mythology and the classics, which began the rich literary and cultural foundations which informed his later work, as well as encouraging his motivation to study.
At the age of 14 David joined Camberwell Art School in 1909, though he was too young to attend life-drawing classes. He studied under A.S Hartrick, (best known now for his memoir of memories of working with Van Gogh and Gauguin), Reginald Savage and Herbert Cole. They introduced him to such varied ideas and techniques as Impressionism, Post Impressionism and more traditional English naturalistic art like that of the Pre-Raphaelites. The broad curriculum also encouraged the study of literature, which developed Jones’s breadth of knowledge in the field.
The Great War brought a temporary end to his training. In January 1915 Jones enlisted enthusiastically in the 38th Division of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. During his time in the army he refused opportunities to rise in the ranks and was determined to remain a private. As his written memoir ‘In Parenthesis’ shows, he enjoyed the camaraderie, companionship and wit of his Welsh and Cockney fellow-soldiers. But his reticence to advance may also not have come from a Lack of confidence in his leadership abilities, as he was shy and always looked relatively young for his age. During the Battle of the Somme in 1916 he was wounded at Mametz Wood, yet he continued in the army until he was invalided out in 1918. The war left permanent scars and traumas in his mind and life but they took time to emerge fully. His involvement in the carnage at Mametz Wood particularly seems to have haunted him for the rest of his years. On leaving the army Jones won a government grant in 1919 to resumed his studies as an artist, first at Camberwell, then he followed its Principal Walter Bayes to Westminster School of Art. There he was taught among others by Walter Sickert, Bayes and Bernard Meninsky.
Jones struggled for nearly two decades to write about his experiences in the Great War, particularly working at it from about 1928, but reliving the memories caused him mental strain, leading to his first breakdown, ‘In Parenthesis’ was finally published in 1937 with an introduction by T. S. Eliot, his editor at Faber and Faber. ‘In Parenthesis’ recalls the life and conditions of his first 7 months in the trenches through a combination of verse and prose, which he regarded as part of the poetry as all used rich language and imagery. The work won high praise, including the Hawthornden Prize, the most prestigious, and only important British literary award of the time. In a modernist style he combined the story of war and ideas of patriotism with elements of Welsh epic poetry, Arthurian legend, the experimental language of Gerard Manley Hopkins and other influences. The Arthurian connections, which he made, related especially to the then-common belief that Arthur arose when Britain was in decline, and he brought hope and truth. Jones found no ‘Age of Chivalry’ in the horrors of modern warfare, so did not use such imagery in his poem. Any ‘chivalry’ was in the common comradeship and wit of the privates supporting one another within the decay. Jones found ethical and religious parallels and messages from the Arthurian legend for those experiencing contemporary life. He rejected the jingoism of the Victorian and Edwardian revival, which related the ideas of chivalry and knighthood to the Empire. These false ideals of chivalry had been part of the cause of war and had led young idealists like him to enlist enthusiastically. The reality, they soon discovered, was very different, summed up in phrases like “.. who gives a bugger for the Dolorous Stroke!” [In Parenthesis p.162] Later he would also relate the futility and horrors of warfare to the Trojan War in works like Aphrodite in Aulis [1941].
Through his traumatising yet formative experience in the trenches Jones describes having experienced certain religious epiphanies, which led him towards the Roman Catholic Church. Notably, one night at the Western Front, he had been sent out into the woods surrounding Ypres, to search for firewood. He stumbled across a dilapidated farmhouse or shed in which a Roman Catholic priest was presiding at an impromptu, candle-lit Mass amid the devastation. Jones was, at the time, a nominal Anglican, and peered with curiosity through a crack in the planks to watch the ritual. The candles, vestments and sight of tough soldiers kneeling humbly to receive the host communicated to him: “two points of flickering candlelight, white altar cloths and a few huddled figures in khaki.” He felt that in watching these men ‘receiving Christ’ he was witnessing a moment of serenity, meaning and value in a place where the world had suffered three years of anguish, destruction and madness.
Returning from the war, at Westminster School of Art he was working close to Westminster Cathedral, which he began to visit regularly to attend services. (His future colleague Eric Gill had been producing and installing his Stations there between 1913 and 1918.) Through David’s visits to the Cathedral and seeking tu understand faith he met and was instructed by the charismatic Father John O'Connor (a friend of GK Chesterton who became to the model for the character of Father Brown in Chesterton's stories). Fr. O’Connor received David Jones into the Catholic Church in 1921 and introduced him to the community of Catholic artists and craftspeople around Eric Gill in Ditchling. Gill had moved to Ditchling with his apprentice Joseph Cribb in 1907. Desmond Chute and Hilary Pepler soon joined them. In 1921, they year that Jones was attracted to join them, they founded the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a Roman Catholic community based on the concept of a medieval guild to support and promote the works of artists and craftsmen. (Unfortunately women were not allowed into membership of the guild until 1972, just 17 years before the guild was wound up in 1989.)
Initially Gill encouraged David Jones to train as a carpenter, but he proved unskilled in that trade, so he took up wood engraving, where he worked in close collaboration with Hilary Pepler. Pepler had himself been introduced to lettering by Gill and had moved to Ditchling in 1916 to set up the St Dominic's Press. Following the traditions and principles of Morris, Ruskin and the Arts and Crafts Movement, they focused on traditional hand-press printing for their publications rather than automation. Jones soon began to produce a number of small wood-engravings as book illustrations for the St. Dominic's Press. He later illustrated books for the Golden Cockerel Press, to which Gill introduced him. (In 1925 he engraved their Cockerel logo. Jones's major illustrated books include wood engravings The Book of Jonah, The Chester Play of the Deluge, Gulliver's Travels, Aesop's Fables, a Welsh translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes [Llyfr y Pregethwr] and an individual image for T. S. Eliot's The Cultivation of Christmas Trees.)
A former Quaker, Pepler too was received into the Catholic Church. His son married Gill’s daughter, but after Gill’s move to Capel-y-ffin Pepler and Gill never resumed their former friendship. Desmond Chute who had met Gill in 1918 and moved to Ditchling as a stone-carver and engraver, left the guild to enter the priesthood in the same year as Jones joined in 1921, but he gave him some training in wood carving and engraving and retained contact with the community. Chute retired to Italy due to health problems and there became a member of Ezra Pound’s circle of friends,
In Ditchling as well as printmaking Jones produced some murals for the newly-built Guild chapel, begun in 1919 and completed by February 1922. His panel of Christ mocked by soldiers, shows them dressed in the uniforms of English ‘Tommies’, reflecting his wartime experiences, and perhaps some of his scars.
The community of the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic was committed to the Roman Catholic faith and lived domestically, supporting one another in community. Influenced by Ruskin and Morris, they rejected capitalist industrialism, but like Christopher Dawson and Max Weber they believed that Protestantism was partly responsible for decline in value and a revival of Catholic spiritual principles would enhance the progress of society. The Guild promoted work and faith, based on the Distributionist ’ theories of G.K.Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc and Fr. Vincent McNabb’s teaching on social idealism. They were also influenced by the ideas of Ananda Coomaraswamy, the Indian writer on spirituality, the arts and society, who added a more universally-orientated intellectualism to their pursuits. McNabb, Prior of the Dominican House of Studies at Hawkesyard, Staffs. was their main introduction to the Dominican Tertiary Order. However McNabb was also understandably uncomfortable with Gill’s emphasis on sensuality and the beauty of the body. The Guild’s ethos was engraved on a stone plaque: “Men rich in virtue studying beautifulness living in peace in their houses”. (This seems ironic in the light of more recent revelations of Gill’s promiscuity.) Jones described the group as a “religious fraternity for those who make things with their hands”. Jones became a Dominican Tertiary with the Guild in 1923 but left in December 1925 to join Gill in Wales. Gill split with the Guild of SS. Joseph and Dominic in 1924 and moved with his family and some followers to a rambling former monastery at Capel-y-ffin near Abergavenny.
Gill’s influence on the young man was strong. Jones moved to Capel-y-ffin temporarily at the end of 1925 partly through Gill’s influence but also through attraction to Gill’s daughter. He spent much of the years 1924 to 1927 visiting the Gills and their followers there. Jones and Gill’s daughter Petra became engaged, but she broke off the engagement in 1927 and David Jones never formed another relationship in which he considered marriage. Their relationship between the two must have been one of contrasts; it would have been challenging for the vivacious, already-sexually-experienced Petra to consider permanent involvement with the introverted and shy David Jones. He was totally committed to his hard-working career as an artist and probably displayed several signs of the traumas of war which led to a breakdown 5 years later. (We do not know whether Petra confided anything of her liaisons with her father, or whether Gill’s sexual activity with her continued during their engagement.)
Petra remained an ideal in Jones’s work for most of his career. Her high forehead and long neck remained features of Jones’s ideal of female attraction, reappearing in most of the women in his paintings. Perhaps the most dramatic representation is the dominant ‘Aphrodite in Aulis’ [1941 Tate Gallery] whose strong thighs and breast dominate her elegant feet and hands, strong neck and smaller head. Originally Jones intended this to represent Phryne of Athens “the sum of all beauty”, but in the making she became “a nice girl”, a metaphor for what attracted him physically and emotionally. Only later did the artist transform the theme into Aphrodite on Aulis, where Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia for fortune in his expedition to Troy. The goddess, standing on an altar, at the centre of an apse of broken classical architecture. Adoring birds fly round her but in the context they resemble fighting planes. Censed by a priest, she has been chained by one ankle, but the chain is broken. Originally the altar was to have the inscription: “De divina pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur” ‘All derives from divine beauty’ [Pseudo-Dionysius]. This was replaced by a relief of a sacrificial lamb, bringing a further Christian association into the painting and its theme about how false ideals can lead to warfare. The lamb has an Ankh Cross around its neck. Around the female figure are ranged the chaos of war: a Trojan ship and a modern warship, Trojan warriors and horses, with contemporary British and German soldiers in the foreground. The latter watch each other; both are partly naked and wounded, perhaps dead, with flowers growing from a helmet or gun
Gill’s community at Capel-y-ffin did not survive long in the isolated setting and they left in 1928. Jones developed his career elsewhere. He returned to London in 1924, but in 1925 returned to Wales several times to visit the Gills at Capel-y-ffin and the Benedictines at Caldey Island.
The remainder of Jones’s life, though active, was financially and emotionally precarious. In 1927 he returned to live full-time with his parents in the family home in Brockley until the mid-1930s. The house and garden feature in several works. He continued to visit Capel-y-ffin and Caldey, Portslade near Hove and holidayed with the Gills in France. For a while his work was prolific, producing engravings for the Golden Cockerel Press and painting fluently and fluidly. He successfully exhibited Welsh seascapes and drawings at the St George's Gallery and watercolours of France at the Goupil Gallery. He also joined and exhibited with the Society of Wood Engravers. However, from the late 1920s his eyesight began to fail, leaving him unable to continue the close, subtle work of printmaking, so he focused more on painting and writing.. His artistic circle expanded in 1928 when from 1928 to 1935 became a member of the Seven and Five Society, mixing with other modernist artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Frances Hodgkins, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Cedric Morris, John Piper, Christopher Wood and the collector Jim Ede.
Delayed wartime memories of his experiences brought on nervous illness, which began to affect him mentally for the remainder of his life and career, influencing his art and writing. Working on the first draft of In Parenthesis reawakened tensions and in 1932 Jones suffered a severe nervous breakdown. Its results delayed the publication of In Parenthesis for 3 years and sadly caused a block in creativity which prevented him from painting his best works for several years.
However, the artwork that he had already produced, and that which he struggled to produce grew in popularity and he was included in the Venice Biennale [1934] and the New York World Fair [1939], with a British touring exhibitions of his work in 1944 and 1954.
Jones suffered his second major breakdown in 1947, while staying with the patron of modern artists and poets Helen Sutherland at Cockley Moor. (Her collection of works was eventually inherited by the David Jones scholar and collector Nicolete Gray.) Jones moved to undergo treatment in a nursing home near Harrow, and left the home after therapy feeling much stronger in body and spirit and more confident. As part of the therapy he was encouraged to paint and draw. After the healing process he decided to move close-by into a boarding house in Harrow, staying there until 1964. In 1954 the Arts Council toured a second exhibition of his work through Britain, showing at Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Swansea, Edinburgh and the Tate Gallery in London.
Meanwhile his writing also gained in confidence. The praise of The Anathemata [1952] encouraged dramatized productions of both The Anathemata and In Parenthesis on the radio, produced by a champion of Jones, Douglas Cleverdon, (who went on to re-publish several of his best books of wood engravings and the complete catalogue and survey of his prints). The Anathemata was only intended as part of a much longer poem, of which Jones wrote sections, eventually published unfinished as ‘The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments’ [1974]. Two posthumous volumes of poetry followed: The Roman Quarry [1981] and three shorter poems in ‘Wedding Poems’ [2002]. Another collection of his prose The Dying Gaul and Other Writings was published posthumously in 1978.
David Jones’s later life in Harrow was fairly lonely, despite his many acquaintances and admirers. Above his bed he hung the words “hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt: vigilemus.” These words are the opening of the long epic 2966 line poem by Bernard of Cluny: De Contemptu Mundi (On Contempt for the World) or ‘The Heavenly Jerusalem’, inspired by the last two chapters of the Revelation of St. John. It particularly focuses on Rev. 21.3-4: "Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them….There will be no more pain, for the former things have passed away". This must have felt particularly relevant to Jones after some of the damages of his damaged life. Bernard’s hymn was translated into English as ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ by John Mason Neale : “Brief life is here our portion; Brief sorrow, short lived care; The life that knows no ending, The tearless life, is there."
The whole first verse of the poem would have been meaningful to David Jones in his last days as he obviously meditated regularly on the meaning of the words in Latin:
“Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt; vigilemus.
Ecce, minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus.
Imminet, imminet, ut mala terminet, æqua coronet,
Recta remuneret, anxia liberet, æthera donet.
Imminet, imminet!”
[“This very hour, the worst of times are here. Keep watching!.
Behold! Here comes, the Judge, with serious face; He is the supreme arbiter
He comes, He comes! Those who have done wrong will have their end, the good He’ll crown.
Now He repays the right and frees the scared from fear; His gifts He brings….
He comes, He comes!”]
When the composer Igor Stravinsky visited Jones in the 1950s, he described the artist as living in a simple bedsit, surrounded by his possessions, arranged close to his mattress in military order, ‘still living as if he was confined to a wartime bunk’. However, this ‘order’ around him was not as organised and Stravinsky thought. Many friends recorded him making futile searches through stacks of papers and books for pieces of remembered information [Miles 1990 p.33]. His friend, the poet and scholar Peter Levi SJ, speaking at David Jones’s Requiem in Westminster Cathedral explained: “David Jones had a devoted, suffering life. He was full of gaiety and sweetness throughout many years of physical and mental illness. He was the friendliest and most loving of human beings and he was terribly lonely. ...yet he was possessed continually by the drifting light of an unexplained hope”.
As his frail health declined David Jones moved into a nursing home for his last ten years, dying on 28 October 1974 (aged 78). Shortly before his death he published a collection of poems of various lengths: ‘The Sleeping Lord and other Fragments’. He is buried in Ladywell and Brockley Cemetery.
Although he was a quiet man he was well-thought of by many intellectuals, T.S. Eliot edited his work, though he complained that he put too much material in each essay - ”what is really the material for a book.” [Letter to Jones 19th Aug. 1943]. Stephen Spender, Igor Stravinsky all visited him. Stravinsky described him to Spender as ‘like visiting a holy man in his cell’. In many ways David Jones seems to have been unworldly, with certain areas of innocence but not naivety. Spender described him playing “a worn record of plain-song Gregorian chant… with hands clasped across his knees and an expression of bliss on his face”.
In the years after the Second World War Jones’s reputation grew, particularly in the field of literature. His complexity was admired by writers and critics like T.S, Eliot, Graham Greene called him "among the great poets of the century", a conclusion with which W.H. Auden and Herbert Read agreed. Igor Stravinsky wrote of him rather excessively in 1962 as "perhaps the greatest living writer in English". Kathleen Raine more realistically admitted that he was probably “too subtle and learned for popular tastes”. Though Auden considered The Anathemata “a flawed masterpiece” he also called it “the best long poem written in English in the 20th Century.” {Encounter, No 5 Feb.1954. London].
David Jones’s was made a ‘Companion of Honour’ shortly before his death, but sadly in the decade following his death, his reputation declined. In the age when abstraction, individualism, cleverness and originality was sought, art based on mythology, history or filled with literary references was not considered fashionable, valuable or sufficiently contemporary. The taste for Eliot’s work thrived, but Jones’s reputation took longer to be rediscovered. The David Jones Society, exhibitions and documentaries kept research and recognition of his value alive. He only regained popular recognition through his place as a war-poet, rather than for his more complex greater works. Jones’s name is commemorated among sixteen poets of the Great War poets on a slate unveiled in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, dedicated on 11 November 1985. Kathleen Raine was probably right that he will never become universally popular, due to his complexities, obscurities and difficulties in his work. I am not being elitist in writing this as I too still don’t understand much of his writing! Elizabeth Jenkins admitted that David Jones was “undoubtedly a difficult poet” but “he dealt with concerns beyond ‘I’ and ‘you’ or ‘here and now’” [Spectrum BBC Wales 4 Nov.1965].
DAVID JONES’S ARTWORK STYLE AND IDEAS
Following the training and ideas of Gill, David Jones considered that the artist should regard himself as an artisan craftsman more than a creator of Fine Art, and worked accordingly. He was a determined worker, keeping up a steady and innovatory output in several media throughout his career, even despite the damage to his nerves and increasing frailty. Gill had taught him ‘the holy tradition of working’ and an artisan’s modesty towards his role. Like Gill he determined not to price his work too highly.
Jones’s later work in paint is less easy to define in quality than some of his fine technical work as an engraver in the 1920s. I consider that his finest and most detailed works were the wood engravings for ‘The Chester Play of the Deluge’ (1927). His wood engravings for Gulliver’s Travels (1925) are compositionally really innovative and strong. His sensitivity and dexterity in design with line is seen in his 10 copper engravings for ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. These demonstrate his sensitivity in responding to the demands and potential of a medium which was relatively new to him. In exploring copper engraving Jones described himself as a “novice” again, discovering the demands of the medium, and finding that he responded in new ways to the subject and technique. His fluency and elegance of line was probably influenced by Gill’s own linear engravings and drawing technique. Jones wrote of “lyricism inherent in the clean, furrowed free, fluent engraved line.” He aimed not to “illustrate” but “to get in copper the general fluctuations of the poem”. To create this rhythm, he decided to design in ‘simple incised lines reinforced here and there and as sparingly as possible by cross-hatched areas’. He continued to innovate and found that he could strengthen, unify and make the linear images more subtle by not totally wiping the plate clean before printing to create “an undertone over the whole area of the plate”. Sadly, working on the copper engravings Jones recognised that his eyesight was failing and recognised that the prints would be the last he would produce. The rest of his visual art career would be confined to drawing and watercolour.
Jones’s experience in linear copper engraving particularly helped him to focus his techniques in drawing and watercolour towards a new freedom in the use of line and wash. Previously he had worked on a few small oil paintings and larger panels for the chapels at Ditchling and Capel-y-ffin. In the small oil-panel ‘The Garden Enclosed’ (1924), a title based on the Song of Songs, he celebrated his engagement to Petra. It has the strong sense of design in flat planes and distorted perspective, which he employed in the design of several wood engraving. But the multi-layered drawing and washes in his watercolours enabled him to develop a greater sense of mystery, allusion and a sense of interconnectedness between worlds and ideas. He tried to create a sense of linear rhythm, physical and spiritual light, a unified the spirit of the place, objects, scene, or people being “re-presented” and a unifying sense of ”inward continuity of sight (site)”.
From his early drawings of animals we sense that Jones felt an affinity and love for animals, which he expressed in his images. He made many visits to draw in London Zoo. In 1935 expounded on this affinity with nature, when describing a key to his life and artistic philosophy as "affection for the intimate creatureliness of things”… “a care for, and appreciation of the particular genius of places, men, trees, animals, and yet withal a pervading sense of metamorphosis and mutability”. The animals in his works are often also metaphors for other sentiments. In the woodblock in my collection, (for Libellus Lapidum 1924) he and Hilary Pepler ride on the back of Pegasus, seeming to represent the flight of the imagination creativity and Christian creative ambition. The Lamb, Pelican, Unicorn and other Christian Bestiary symbols regularly recur, as does the browsing horse of the warrior. Like the love of the life in nature in the flowers that he painted, nature is celebrated both for its own value and its variety of symbolic significances and allusions.
Jones’s paintings became more complicated from the 1930s onward. He increased the size of the paper he used, included more areas of detail and used multiple-layers of transparent washes, painting far more slowly, with greater attention to what he was including or excluding, and working into the painting more fully. He also included more profuse and complex literary symbolism or allusions. As a result the works may feel more confusing and less fresh than his earlier watercolours, but they retain their sense of harmony, despite being more complicated. Sometimes he employed many quick, small strokes or a rich variety of subtle hues to create a sense of light and vibrancy of life, as in his portrait of his former fiancé as a symbol of feminine beauty in ‘Petra im Rosenhag’ (1931). The marks which over-pattern many of these compositions give the impression of the play of light and life within a picture, as well as reinforcing the impression that a life-force unites and unifies all things.
In both his art and poetry David Jones combined historical and cultural awareness, a fascination with words and metaphors, visual and rhythmic sensitivity, an interest in and care for humanity and nature, and an awareness that the best art is not obvious, but works on your senses through enigma, allusions and vague recollection of its relevance to something you cannot quite define. Like the work of T.S. Eliot, who admired and promoted David Jones. he is not easy to read or take in immediately. It takes time and familiarity for comprehension to awaken (or so I find personally.) He was working in a period when intellectual allusions were valued in art and references were common, as in the writings of Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, even Wilfred Owen. However, he was modest about his place in the art-world and in history. David Jones may not be high in the hierarchy of British modern artists like Bacon or Moore. He’s more on the level of Piper, Nash, Sutherland and his friend and colleague Eric Gill, though more difficult and complex in his art and theory than comparably skilled artists like Cecil Collins or Robin Tanner. I find his writings on art often more astute and psychologically and spiritually exploratory than many influential British theorists of art at the time, including Gill, Roger Fry, Kenneth Clark, Clive Bell, or Herbert Read.
Jones’s visual works in different genres: engravings, calligraphy and paintings are very different from each other, yet show a similar attention to subject, symbolism, detail, line, compositional sensitivity, imagination and delicacy of touch and approach. Jones’s intellectualism and knowledge in literature, history and philosophy was largely self-taught, through extensive reading and discussions with friends in the arts and the Church. He often expressed recognition of the limitations of his knowledge, though his interests and the scope of his thinking were broad. Part of the breadth of his exploration of the influences on culture came through a fascination with the writings of Oswald Spengler. He studied his work particularly during the early years of the Second World War, but apparently had been reading him earlier. (The first volume of The Decline of the West was published in Germany in 1918 and in Britain in 1926). Spengler distrusted the dominance of Classical civilization on Europe and encouraged cultural relativism and a concentration on the backgrounds to one’s own particular culture and that of the surrounding society and nation. In this he had been strongly influenced by Goethe and Nietzsche but, as a psychologist, he was suspicious of being over-Romantic in one’s approach. Jones’s work is more influenced by Romantic idealism towards his subjects and language, though this is balanced by his experiences of the horrors and pains of life. Spengler’s work gave David intellectual justification for examining (alongside Classical myths and Classical History) Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Arthurian, Grail, Judeo-Christian, Germanic sources, local and popular cultural history to explore universal and particular ideas.
However, Jones’s meticulous research was for more poetic ends than that of an historian or scholar. He used his sources for poetic effect, literary allusions and meaning rather than for scholarship. He was sometimes embarrassed or felt that he had failed when works appeared more intellectual than meaningful. Of his drawing The Lord of Venedotia [1948] he wrote “I don’t feel that it is much good – I’ve gone ‘academic’ in some way, and that distresses me.” [Letter to Saunders Lewis quoted in Miles 1990 p.59.] This lack of confidence in the work is sad yet reflects Jones’s character. In most ways the drawing is superb and one of his strongest. He may, of course have meant that, to him, it felt more like ‘academic drawing’ than a visionary feeling similar to many of his other contemporary drawings. But the imaginative portrait is not ‘academic’; it shows an ideal of Mediaeval Welsh manhood with mail and cloak, sword and hawk. ‘Venedotia’ is the Latin name of the North-West Welsh Kingdom of Gwynedd. Its leaders rose to dominance as kings of Wales. The ‘Lord’ stands upright and confident amid hills trees, herons in flight, horses and goats. Behind him the Chi-Rho symbol on a monolith surmounted by a radiant dove suggests that he may also be a model for Christian manhood, or the combination of pagan and Christian faith. If he is still unconverted, he may be a sign of those waiting to assimilate the Christian faith with the nobility of their Welsh culture. The painting dates from the beginning of his work on The Anathemata, written between 1948 and 1951. The Lord of Venedotia’s identity may be found in footnotes to The Anathemata [1952 p.71-72]. There Jones referred to a Roman Briton warrior prince Cunedda Wledig from the district of the Otadini or Votadini in South Scotland. He became Christianised and established rule in Wales c400C.E. in the age of St. Ambrose, presumably at the Romans’ invitation. He established a dynasty of Welsh kings that lasted for nine centuries. In this painting the Lord of Venedotia has become part of his land; his robe, hair, armour, unshaved beard, the torc around his neck and brooch share the same textures and colours as the landscape, and the worn sense of being part of the history of the land. He is the epitome of a man who is at one with his nature, faith, background and role in the world.
Through the various cultures that David Jones combined in his works, he reflected on different aspects of the age which influenced him. Between the wars Britain developed and changed in its awareness of, and attitude to, its cultural past, particularly when so much in society and in cultural artefacts had been affected or threatened by war. Wales grew in a sense of its particular and individual identity and the nation’s valuing of its cultural heritage. Research into its mythology and cultural past advanced. David Jones was part of this trend, fascinated by the stories which give identity to nations and their culture. The death of Llewelyn in 1282 was political defeat for the Welsh, but also damaged the development of the individuality of their culture. Jones likens it to the defeat of Troy and the death of Arthur. David Jones did not concern himself with fighting for Welsh politics, but he was interested in retaining and reviving the culture so that the people would understand their identity. What they ‘imagined’ Wales to be, through its myths and ideas, was as important as its history - a “sacred heritage” [David Jones article in Planet 21 - Tregaron 1974 p.5]. This could also be related to faith. Where God is invisible, what we imagine God, faith, our own identity or the nature of Christ and the Eucharist to be can be as strengthening as having proof.
He applied a growing interest in historical method to the making of art. Though Jones’ experiences of serving and being wounded in the Great War left him traumatised and thoughtful, he focused this creatively. During the decades that followed he tried to find themes and a style for his art, which would help him express his response and to formulate more universal ideas which grew from his studies. The process of formulating his ideas and images strained both his eyesight and his mental health but he remained committed to his art, especially through the encouragement given to him by his new-found faith, the communities of artists with which he mixed, and the positive response to his literary and visual work.
Jones wanted to find literary and visual styles in which he could explore, reflect-on and “show forth” how the human, animal and spiritual world were interconnected. His ideas are sometimes possibly more ambitious than his visual skills were able to create. The deliberate naivety of form or style in some of his wood-engravings for the St. Dominic Press does not often convey the depth of thought and ideas behind the work. His watercolours, sensitive as they are, rarely manage to reach the compositional standard and strength of his engravings. This may be because engraving demanded far greater discipline and planning, whereas his drawing and painting is often more fluid and spontaneous in its mark-making.
In the army Jones had worked for a short while as a cartographer and he tried at times, particularly in 1943, to create “maps of the artist’s mind”. They chart the different aspects and directions of his thinking and influences, following the links and paths by which these ideas became associated. At the time art-historians and historians of religion were making similar maps of the influences and interconnections by which styles and ideas developed. ‘Background to David Jones: A Study in Sources and Drafts’, a fascinating book by Jonathan Miles, unlocks these varied influences. Jones’s works in poetry, prose, or paint can sometimes feel like a maze rather or labyrinth of associated and subtly connected legends, myths, religious beliefs, geological movements, the migration of peoples, Arthurian and Celtic tales, British and European history, fascination with ancient Roman and other past influences on the nation, Celtic and Mediaeval culture and faith. His interest in geography and geology encouraged his to also see culture and history in layers of strata. His “maps of the artist’s mind” link Christianity, British culture, legend and literary heritage with Greece, Rome, Persia, Byzantium, Germany, Scandinavia, as well as the closer Celtic legends of Cornwall, and Wales. He was fascinated by the connections and interconnected links between ‘myths’, ‘history’ and what he termed “pseudo-history”. All these combined to form “the matter of Britain”, the background within which we live and understand aspects of ourselves. He was interested in getting to the facts behind history, and made multiple annotations and corrections in his books, as Miles notes [1990 p.68-9]. But the myth or beliefs behind history were equally important. Together they might point to, and make sense of complex universal needs within the human consciousness. Of the myths and pseudo-history Jones highlighted, in his 1927 copy of A.M. Hocart’s ‘Kingship’: “The poets are valuable witnesses, for they do not invent half as much as they are supposed to do, but rather turn ancient facts to poetic uses.”
He found in Classical figures from history and mythology many parallels to Christian figures, qualities or moral and ethical examples. Hector, Paris, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Helen of Troy, were those to whom he most regularly referred. In Hector David Jones drew parallels with Christ as hero, determined protector of his city. Athena the virginal ‘protectress of her people and of the violated, he related to the Virgin Mary. He was fascinated by similarities between the language used of Athena or her chryselephantine s statue in the Parthenon and metaphors and titles given by the Catholic Church to Mary: ‘House of Gold’, ‘Tower of Ivory’. ‘Stella Maris’. Both figures shared symbols, particularly the crescent-moon.
When writing of Rome, David Jones often used the Empire as an historical fact to stress the historicity of Jesus’ life. The Roman army recurs regularly in his works, in relation to his own experiences in the Great War, their persecution and sacrifice of Christ, their occupation of Palestine, and the domination of military might and military principles over a conquered world. He was interested in the process by which Mars may have changed from a god of agriculture to a god of war and refers to this in The Roman Quarry [p.37]. Mars’s legendary rape of Illia mother of Romulus and Remus became a symbol for him of the human inheritance of war-like behaviour and impulses. Were the Gods, he supposes, being altered to suit the changing principles or activities of the culture and nation? Have we done the same to our concept of the Christian God in order to justify our behaviour? In The Anathemata and The Roman Quarry Jones used the Roman calendar to date Christ’s nativity and Passion. In the penultimate part of The Anathemata Christ is associated with former agricultural role of Mars becoming the nourishing bread of the Eucharist as well as triumphing as a warrior victor over sin and death. He also drew parallels between Roman legends of the fertility season with Christ’s sacrifice, as if, like the myth of Tellus (Roman god of the earth), Christ was bringing nourishment, fertility and transformation through the shedding of his blood. Jones implied in this that Christ could do the same for our damaged contemporary world. Can the blood and bread of the Eucharist begin such transformation? It fascinated him that within the Roman Imperium the seed of a new Divine Kingdom was born, taught and grew in the person of Jesus, whose principles were so different from those of the Roman Empire.
In the inter-war years there was a revival of interest in the Arthurian legends. This was not just the Romanticism of the 19th Century revival, with a longing for ideas of chivalry and mediaeval-orientated idealism. Renewed focus on the Arthurian legends included a fascination with the psychological and spiritual longings which lay beneath the Romantic Movement and the yearning for chivalrous or righteous behaviour. Other writers explored similar ideas, like Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and T.H. White and Alan Garner in the next generation. White’s The Once and Future King, published in 1958, revised and expanded his earlier shorter Arthurian novels published between 1938 and 1940. White did not just retell the Arthurian stories in a popular way, he explored the motivations of characters an made comparisons with the present day (since Merlin lives his life backwards in time and alludes to modern issues (aeroplanes, tanks, telegraphs, Hitler, etc.) to show the relevance of the past to the present world, previously considered civilized, now recovering from the misery and chaos of the Second World War. David Jones’s aims were similar, though with more of a focus on Christian spirituality. The links between Arthurian legends and Christianity have been strong since mediaeval times and the legend of the Grail expanded by the monks of Glastonbury. They had been focused by nationalism to present Imperial Britain as a nation particularly blessed by God. Jones expanded on this for a more universal idea of Christian spirituality. He united the ideals of chivalry, miraculous spiritual powers like the Grail, the sanctity and holiness of love, and the unifying nature of an ideal reign of the Arthurian Kingdom as metaphors for our psychological longings and the quest for a utopian Kingdom of Heaven. When Douglas Cleverdon attempted to commission Jones to illustrate and edition of Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, he sadly refused, claiming that it would take a lifetime’s work to do justice to it and make its relevance to the present apparent in his art: “I hate to feel not equal to a decent task… It requires almost a life’s work for a modern person to extract what is ‘essential’ and eternal from the Morte Arthur and free it from chain-mail-sword-knight-lady-pennon-castle-serf=romance-gothic-cloth of god-chessboard business” [Letter 16th May 1929 Tate Archive].
Jones’s search to understand and express our background and underlying needs may have been awakened or at least deepened by his mental problems after the trauma of war and ways of facing and treating memories. Amid mental distress he describes experiencing challenges and a spiritual epiphany which awakened new ideas and faith in him, as earlier on the Western Front. He continued to explore and examine these in his notebooks and through his completed work. In Parenthesis was the first major fruit of this attempt to understand, make connections and come to conclusions about a wealth of disparate ideas and memories. In his 1938 acceptance speech for the Hawthornden Prize, which he won for In Parenthesis, he claimed that writing the book had clarified his thoughts on the interconnected nature of human spiritual and physical need and helped him to relate them to the context of history, literature and myth: “I felt, more clearly than before, the unity of the Arts.”
Jones converted to Catholicism in 1921 after his demobilisation from the army and the beginnings of his attempt to make sense of the war. As his faith developed in understanding of the different layers of meaning within the mystery of the Eucharist, he came to consider the Mass as a metaphor or image for the way that an event, action or artwork can epitomise and hold within itself many layers of truth. The needs which the Catholic Mass nourished helped him resolve his thoughts on the human needs, which legends, history and ‘pseudo-history sought to fulfil or reach towards. He found a sense of peace and meaningfulness in taking the Eucharist, and believed that it resolved many of the needs of the human soul, The Eucharist remained a ‘mystery’; it didn’t explain everything but nevertheless made sense of life, longings, spiritual searching, suffering, even the suffering and ugliness that he had witnessed and been sensitised to in the trenches.
David Jones’s linking of theology and art was encouraged by Gill and the circle at Ditchling, but he took it further. His theory of aesthetics was founded in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Maritain, who was in vogue in Catholic theological and artistic circles throughout the mid-20th Century A revival in interest in Aquinas was promoted by Leo XIII’s encyclical ‘Aeterni Patris’ in 1879 and developed through the early 20th Century, leading to a revival of Catholic scholasticism, intellectual life and Catholic arts. Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism had been translated in 1923 by Fr. John O’Connor, who had been so instrumental in Jones’s conversion, and who had influenced Gill’s ideas. Maritain’s Religion and Culture 1931 encouraged a revival in Catholic intellectualism. In Epoch and Artist [p.172] Jones discussed the influence of all of these.
The multi-layered mystery of the Mass became linked in Jones’s ideas to the process involved in making his art. Jones wrote many essays explaining his ideas on art, literature, faith and history, collected into two volumes: ‘Epoch and Artist’ [1959] and ‘The Dying Gaul [1978] To me, two of the most meaningful essays are ‘Art and Sacrament’ (in Epoch and Artist) and ‘Use and Sign’ (in The Dying Gaul), where he explained the connections that he felt between what the artist is creating in his/her art, with its signs and symbolism and activity and parallels with the Eucharistic liturgy. He wrote of creativity as a high calling that raises human beings above other natural creatures, reflecting the image of God as Creator within us. The priest in the liturgy and ritual of the Mass brought together Jewish and Christian history, tradition, theology, doctrine and reflected Christ’s actions at the Last Supper, and his self-offering at Calvary. In a similar way, Jones believed that the artist, in creating, brings together various understandings of art, life, and his/her perceptions of reality to create a different form of reality. Since Post-Impressionism modernist styles were not merely copying nature, they were trying to make reality seem more real thought stylistic and formal inventions and innovations. Since the writings of theorists like Roger Fry and Clive Bell this was the main emphasis in thinking about art in the college and artistic circles in London, which influenced the development of Jones’s own theories. As a Catholic he was committed to his belief in the doctrine of the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in the Eucharist. He believed the Priest through his liturgy and the involvement of God’s Spirit was making the presence of Christ apparent. Similarly the artist, Jones considered, could make reality present in his visual art. He was not just creating metaphors for reality, his art aimed to bring the hidden meanings behind reality to the fore and make them visible. Jones expressed this artistic aim as to “make substantially and really present in one’s medium what already is” … to “give a mode to that which exists modelessly.” “… painting must be a thing and not the impression of something [it] has affinity with what the Church said of the mass, that what was oblated under the species of bread and wine at the supper was the same thing as what was bloodily immolated on Calvary.”
Jones also related the Christian idea of ‘anamnesis’ within the Mass (“Do this in remembrance of me!”) to the artist bringing to memory essentials of the essence and meaning of his subjects, even bringing them to life, in himself and the viewer. In ‘Rite and Fore-Time’ he explores the idea that we might even bring to mind what is in the human subliminal, ancestral or collective memory. The Anathemata and The Sleeping Lord also explore aspects of this, relating ancestral memory to a Welsh Palaeolithic cave burial at Paviland, overlooking the Bristol Chanel.. The pre-history of human searching for a relationship with God may be part of a common inner longing. Searching for connections with the religions and cultures of the past had fascinated many, from James Frazer’s The Golden Bough [1922] to psychologists, Theosophists, historians, art-historians, philosophers and theologians. Christopher Dawson, one of Jones’s sources had explored the ideas in The Age of the Gods [1928], as did Ananda Coomaraswamy. Works like Jones’s Ariadne in Aulis draw parallels between Classical ideals of beauty, the pre-historic Venus of Willendorf, the Virgin Mary and the modern woman.
Given this sacramental idea and his belief in the universal the importance of what the artist was creating, it is not surprising that Jones approached his artistic practice with such seriousness of intent and care. He produced his work with great attention to detail, historic research, meaning, valuing of his subjects, precision and delicacy. He called the artist’s and the priest’s activity a “re-presentation” of reality.
Gill’s influence in Jones’s early days as a professional artist instilled in him the crucial principle that art must ‘proceed from the known’. He encouraged Jones to continue producing figurative work and to develop a hard-working, craftsman-like attitude, which remained with Jones throughout his career, despite periods of mental illness and breakdowns. Gill at first encouraged him to try a career in carpentry, but he proved unskilled, so turned to wood-engraving at which he soon excelled and became inventive. He did not imitate Gill but developed his own distinctive styles. By 1924 Jones’s work had moved away from Gill’s linear simplicity, emphasis on medievalism and craftsmanship. He was developing a personal engraving techniques and styles, exploring new ways of painting and designing in watercolour. He also expanded upon Gill’s ideas of the artist’s possible place in and contribution to society, and the links between faith and art. However the fact that he was developing in all of these directions partly stemmed from the influence of Gill, and the training and ideas developed within the Guild community at Ditchling. His sense of composition also built upon his former training at Westminster Art School.
Despite his high aims. Jones’s character was not that of an artist who was ‘precious’ about his art. He was a relatively humble man; he lived quietly and admitted that even the best art by the finest artists is relatively useless in practical terms. Some modesty in of his ideas about the ‘workmanship’ of art developed through his association with Eric Gill. Gill believed that the artist should regard himself as a artisan or craftsman, not over-promote his status or over-charge for his work. Art for Jones was an act that was unique to human beings. He believed that we should express gratitude for our sensitivity to beauty and aesthetic appreciation. It is an artist’s duty to develop this, to work to deepen one’s skills and sensibilities, to help to raise human minds above the mundane and enhance society One of the reasons behind Jones's printmaking was to be able to distribute good art relatively affordably and accessibly. Art, he wrote, is a “gratuitous” activity. He gave away many images of his works.
One watercolour for which Jones did ask a high price was Vexilla Regis. It’s title ‘The Triumph-banners of the King’ derives from the great Latin hymn of Christ’s Passion, attributed to Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, written for the procession of a relic of the True Cross to his cathedral in 596 C.E.. The price which Jones asked for his painting Vexilla Regis was intended to prevent its sale, so he could retain the work, which meant much to him as almost a personal, visual, creedal statement. Within a scene of trees, gathered around one main central tree are many signs and symbols: The tree-trunk is embedded with nails. With the glowing crown of entangled thorn-branches at the base of the tree these point to this painting as a sign of Christ’s Cross. On the trees to either side are other Christian symbols: The Pelican on its nest, feeds its young from its blood. The Eagle was a sign both of Christ’s proximity to God as the bird who flies closest to the sun, and a sign of Christ’s incarnation and death and resurrection in plummeting to earth then rising up from the sea. Horses or ponies inhabit the grove of trees, perhaps symbols of faithfulness, the help-metes of human beings, or the horses of the Roman army still present in memory. ---A trumpet, curved like Roman war-trumpets blown in triumph-processions lies on the floor of the forest, perhaps abandoned now that Christ has brought peace, or waiting for us to lift and blow in praise or glory. The way that Jones expanded the compositions of major drawings like this to fill the paper to its edges with detail reflected the intensity of patterning in Celtic manuscripts and the interwoven structure and detail of medieval Welsh poetry.
When Jones eventually agreed to sell the painting he wrote a long explanation of its contents, as he perceived them, while modestly recognising and accepting that viewers might find other meanings within his works: “The general idea of the picture was also associated, in my mind, with the collapse of the Roman world. The three trees as it were left standing on Calvary—the various bits and pieces of classical ruins dotting the landscape—also older things, such as the stone henge or “druidic” circle a little to the right of the right-hand tree in the distance and then the Welsh hills more to the right again, the rushing ponies are, more or less, the horses of the Roman cavalry, turned to grass and gone wild and off to the hills… “I should like to make plain that none of this symbolism is meant to be at all rigid, but very fluid—I merely write down a few of the mixed ideas that got into this picture as you were kind enough to ask.” [My thoughts] “were less explicitly intended than perhaps it sounds, when written down, and there is much other stuff besides.”
David Jones believed that all parts of God’s Creation are already valuable, so the artist only highlights aspects of nature and truth by drawing attention to them. Perhaps he might occasionally add lustre to what some merely view as mundane. In drawing through simple lines he stressed that the ‘outline’ of an object was never intended as a definitive explanation or conclusion about the subject. He intended it as a starting-point for the viewer to consider the importance and meaning of the subject. The line or image “ is no more a stopping place than is the sea’s horizon. It is really all a question of feeling that truth intensely enough.” Similarly he wanted his poetry to be the beginning of the reader’s exploration, not confined to his own definitive statements on subjects. His second published poem, The Anathemata (1952), far more complex than In Parenthesis, was published with multiple footnotes, explaining the allusions within it. The Anathemata is a symbolic overview of Western culture. It was partly inspired by a visit to Palestine in which he made associations between the Ancient Roman occupation of Israel and the current British governance and occupation of the region. In the long poem he combined local Levantine mythology and history with British history and mythology. Despite clarifying his sources in multiple footnotes David Jones emphasised that he did not want to determine the reader’s interpretation or imaginative response. Rather he wanted to help his readers to follow the paths of thought and discover within themselves many similar influences upon their own cultural identity and how it had developed, making our own associations and interconnections. He wanted us to recognise that our era, epoch or culture has developed through various stages to where we. Many sources have conditioned our formation, so understanding them might help us to develop creatively and expand our responses. Although he was interested in finding universally relevant themes, he recognised that some of his readers would not have the same backgrounds, or the same awareness of their cultural inheritance. He was not being culturally elitist, but wanting others to share his joy and fascination with aspects of culture that might serve to unify people, and which he felt could be universal.
Christianity was one aspect of world culture which Jones believed could unify society and prevent the horrors which he had experienced in war. He was perhaps being naïve in relating this to the Palestinian theme in The Anathemata, since the political faith divisions in that region have torn it apart for centuries, particularly in present times. However he believed that the self-sacrificial love which was at the centre of his faith could be the unifying principle which brought disparate people to value one another, appreciate their various cultures and live in peace. His last words in The Anathemata, referring to the Last Supper and Cross, challenge the reader to consider and accept what Jesus achieved through his loving self-sacrifice, as the fulcrum on which life, the future and salvation and unity depend:
“What did he do other
recumbent at the garnished supper?
What did he do yet other
riding the Axle Tree?”
As a poet and lover of literature, who valued the levels of meaning in the words of the liturgy, David Jones became fascinated by the ways in which words carry and communicate meaning. His painted inscriptions, which he called “my form of abstraction”. His letter-forms were freer and less formal than the calligraphy and type-faces which he had learned under Gill and Pepler, which had been devised for more formal purposes. To convey his particular sense of spirituality he built upon uncial and other creative manuscript lettering, which related more to the Celtic than Classical past. These letter-forms, he also felt, were closer to British and Welsh culture. Most of his inscriptions were not intended for sale, but to be “gratuitous”: During the Second World War he sent photographs of them to many friends, often as Christmas presents. To him they suggested the passing on of a blessing. He called these inscriptions “living lettering.” Often they reproduce texts from the Latin liturgy or Latin hymns with which he was familiar, and which had so many different layers of meaning for him. Other inscriptions which he chose were similarly multi-layered in their associations and meanings, whether in Greek, Welsh, or Anglo-Saxon. On the back of the photographic cards, which he made of them, he explained their meaning. The artist’s role in making them, he regarded as being a ”secretary to the Author in Eternity”. By highlighting the words or quotations Jones was again “drawing attention to” or “shining light on” inherent meanings and details which already existed in the world, which might be otherwise overlooked and their value missed.
Jones meditated on the words of each inscription before highlighting and bringing them to life in calligraphy and colour. Over an opaque pigment of Chinese White base he carefully laid out the words in pencil. The form or breaks in words often suggest further meanings. Take for example: ‘QUIA PER INCARNATI VERBI… ’ “For by the mystery of the Word made flesh the light of thy glory has shone anew upon the eyes of our mind.” He breaks the word “INCARNATI” between the “C” and “A” giving emphasis to the theological implication of that which was ”in God” breaking away and becoming part of the world ‘in human flesh’. The effect is to try to make the fact of the incarnation “shine anew” in the reader’s mind. The break also reflects the fracturing of the Host in the Mass. The colours with which he picked out his letters are also often significant. Even the bends and curves in the borders or letters are intentional, like optical equivalents to the ‘entasis’ distortions in Greek architecture, intended to draw attention to the clarity of the construction.
David Jones’s paintings also contain much intentional significance and symbolism. Many of his later paintings are views from his window. He often took a high perspective viewpoint, in order to pattern the view beyond, as many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters had done. But he was not so much closely reproducing nature as and reinterpreting or “re-presenting” it to draw attention to a spiritual or significant presence within his subject or within the world. He was also fascinated by the modern relevance of historically important Christian symbols. The Ship, the Vexilla Regis, the Pelican and the Unicorn particularly intrigued him. He represented the Unicorn with its horn lowered healing or absorbing the poison from the water. This to him, like the Pelican, the Unicorn was a sign of self- sacrifice, which he also used as a symbol of himself as an artist, seeking to draw imagery from the world and re-present it in ways that could be healing and positive. There is a life-affirming vitality and thought behind his modestly-created artwork.
Eric Gill in his Last Essays (1942) called David Jones’s work “ a combination of two enthusiasms, that of the man who is enamoured of the spiritual world and at the same time as much enamoured of the material body in which he must clothe his vision.’” This probably says as much about Gill’s own preoccupations as that of Jones. David Jones was more visionary in his attempt to express in various forms, media and symbols – “the universal thing showing through the particular thing”.
Even though Jones’s work is figurative and saturated in traditional Christian faith and ancient cultures, he was definitely a ‘modernist’ and worked with many innovatory ideas. For much of his creative career his aim to express his vision of ‘universal’ things was different from the preoccupations of many of his more overtly ‘modernist’ contemporaries. Clive Bell had emphasised that Post-Impressionism had taught the artist to create “significant form”. Jones’s forms were definitely ‘significant’ but not sufficiently revolutionary for some contemporary artists and critics, which is partly why his reputation dwindled so fast. He did not impose his ideas or style on his art but developed his style from his subjects. He tried to create a feeling that the object or image was “sacramental” and had eternal spiritual value, even if the art that highlighted it was ephemeral. Each figure or object was itself a sacred reality because it was created or existed in God’s world. Such specific faith in Christianity was not fashionable among many modernist art theorists, though throughout the 20th Century several significant modernist artists, with no particular commitment to belief, produced works on religious subjects: (Picasso, Matisse, Moore, Bacon, Germaine Richter as well as those with committed faith – Rouault, Sutherland, Piper, Spencer.) Modernist art theorists also rejected ideas that contemporary art could be illustrative or literary, though artists like Picasso, Matisse, Miro often illustrated literature and made allusions to it in their work. Van Gogh, after all, had been one of the most literary of all the Post-Impressionist influences upon them. In ways such as these, the faith and intense the intense literary influence on Jones’s images and writings set his work apart from the mainstream of Modernism.
David Jones’s major commitments in his art were to express the depth of meaning that he found within the world, the spiritual and physical value of his subjects, the value of the viewer for whom he was creating and to whom he wanted to communicate, and the value of learning from the past to make sense of and transform the present. He saw his artistic task as to draw attention to subjects and meanings that could enhance and deepen people’s perceptions of themselves and the culture which formed them. It is encouraging that an artist so damaged by war could turn the traumas of those experiences into a creativity which was intended to unify and advance our human understanding of ourselves and our culture. In this way the parallels which he drew between the artist’s creativity and Christ’s sacrifice for the good of others become clearer. Rather like the priestly task in presiding at the Mass and bringing the liturgy alive, Jones saw his artistic task as “showing forth” the meaningfulness of the world. In creating works of beauty and meaning, Jones was trying to “re-present” the value which he believed God felt for the world in which Jones had experienced and witnessed such suffering, Where people had lost touch with a sense of their creaturely value and historical and cultural perspective, he aimed to reawaken and unify their understanding of their identity and the value of all things.
In Dorset the summer before some college friends and I camped near Chesil Beach and I had found in a second-hand bookshop, a copy of his easiest-to-read book 'In Parenthesis', as well as Thomas Traherne's 'Centuries of Meditation', which began another fascination with Traherne’s writing. I'd heard of neither author before, but they became my intense study for the rest of the summer, and have been among my favourite books ever since. I bought my first print by Jones similarly by serendipity. A former colleague owned it and wanted to sell it. I jumped at the chance as it was an artists' proof of one of the ‘Deluge’ wood engravings – my favourites among his works. Since then I have managed to collect the whole series, which I believe are his most accomplished engravings. Several years later I became close friends with the painter Kate Green, daughter of the Royal Academician Anthony Green. Kate's then-husband, Andy, taught at the time at Harrow School and they lived in the house in Harrow where David Jones had lived previously.
This series of coincidences provided the context in which I came to discover and explore David Jones, but my fascination with him developed mostly from finding his work enigmatic and challenging. Certain works like the wood engravings, In Parenthesis and essays in Epoch and Artist were immediately attractive and meaningful. His writings and watercolours, draw me in more by a process akin to osmosis or hypnotism. They attract the senses and feel spiritually meaningful but do not immediately communicate their meaning and are not conventionally ‘beautiful’. I have had to work at appreciating them, recognising that Jones’s ideas, images and thoughts contain truths that I have never found expressed in other authors or artist’s work in any similar way. From them I sense a deeper feeling of being part of the past than even William Blake, Samuel Palmer, or the English Neo-Romantics who were Jones’s contemporaries. He has a more subtle aesthetic sensitivity than many of the modernist artists and writers who influenced his time, even if he is more obscure.
In his poem ‘A, a, a, Domine Deus’ David Jones encouraged us to work at the comprehension of things which we do not understand. If we ignore what we find hard to comprehend because something is new, challenging, culturally different or unfamiliar, we may miss meanings and encounters that could enhance and enlighten our lives and thinking:
“I have been on my guard
not to condemn the unfamiliar.
For it is easy to miss Him
at the turn of a civilisation.”
BIOGRAPHY
Walter David Jones was born on 1 November 1895 in Arabin Road, Brockley, Kent, now in the London suburbs. The family later moved nearby to Howson Road. His Welsh father from Flintshire, worked as a printer's overseer for the Christian Herald Press. David’s mother Alice, a Londoner, also worked for the press, though there is little to suggest that these connections influenced David’s later work as a Fine-Print-maker. David had two siblings: Harold (who died of tuberculosis at the age of 19) and Alice. James, David’s father instilled in the young boy “a passionate conviction that I belonged to my father’s nation”, even in his English suburban surroundings. As a young child he drew profusely, (several of his early drawings survive, particularly of animals: ‘Dancing Bear’ and ‘The Lion’(1902) are among his most memorable. He would later often visit London Zoo to draw.) As a youth he was also devoted to reading history, mythology and the classics, which began the rich literary and cultural foundations which informed his later work, as well as encouraging his motivation to study.
At the age of 14 David joined Camberwell Art School in 1909, though he was too young to attend life-drawing classes. He studied under A.S Hartrick, (best known now for his memoir of memories of working with Van Gogh and Gauguin), Reginald Savage and Herbert Cole. They introduced him to such varied ideas and techniques as Impressionism, Post Impressionism and more traditional English naturalistic art like that of the Pre-Raphaelites. The broad curriculum also encouraged the study of literature, which developed Jones’s breadth of knowledge in the field.
The Great War brought a temporary end to his training. In January 1915 Jones enlisted enthusiastically in the 38th Division of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. During his time in the army he refused opportunities to rise in the ranks and was determined to remain a private. As his written memoir ‘In Parenthesis’ shows, he enjoyed the camaraderie, companionship and wit of his Welsh and Cockney fellow-soldiers. But his reticence to advance may also not have come from a Lack of confidence in his leadership abilities, as he was shy and always looked relatively young for his age. During the Battle of the Somme in 1916 he was wounded at Mametz Wood, yet he continued in the army until he was invalided out in 1918. The war left permanent scars and traumas in his mind and life but they took time to emerge fully. His involvement in the carnage at Mametz Wood particularly seems to have haunted him for the rest of his years. On leaving the army Jones won a government grant in 1919 to resumed his studies as an artist, first at Camberwell, then he followed its Principal Walter Bayes to Westminster School of Art. There he was taught among others by Walter Sickert, Bayes and Bernard Meninsky.
Jones struggled for nearly two decades to write about his experiences in the Great War, particularly working at it from about 1928, but reliving the memories caused him mental strain, leading to his first breakdown, ‘In Parenthesis’ was finally published in 1937 with an introduction by T. S. Eliot, his editor at Faber and Faber. ‘In Parenthesis’ recalls the life and conditions of his first 7 months in the trenches through a combination of verse and prose, which he regarded as part of the poetry as all used rich language and imagery. The work won high praise, including the Hawthornden Prize, the most prestigious, and only important British literary award of the time. In a modernist style he combined the story of war and ideas of patriotism with elements of Welsh epic poetry, Arthurian legend, the experimental language of Gerard Manley Hopkins and other influences. The Arthurian connections, which he made, related especially to the then-common belief that Arthur arose when Britain was in decline, and he brought hope and truth. Jones found no ‘Age of Chivalry’ in the horrors of modern warfare, so did not use such imagery in his poem. Any ‘chivalry’ was in the common comradeship and wit of the privates supporting one another within the decay. Jones found ethical and religious parallels and messages from the Arthurian legend for those experiencing contemporary life. He rejected the jingoism of the Victorian and Edwardian revival, which related the ideas of chivalry and knighthood to the Empire. These false ideals of chivalry had been part of the cause of war and had led young idealists like him to enlist enthusiastically. The reality, they soon discovered, was very different, summed up in phrases like “.. who gives a bugger for the Dolorous Stroke!” [In Parenthesis p.162] Later he would also relate the futility and horrors of warfare to the Trojan War in works like Aphrodite in Aulis [1941].
Through his traumatising yet formative experience in the trenches Jones describes having experienced certain religious epiphanies, which led him towards the Roman Catholic Church. Notably, one night at the Western Front, he had been sent out into the woods surrounding Ypres, to search for firewood. He stumbled across a dilapidated farmhouse or shed in which a Roman Catholic priest was presiding at an impromptu, candle-lit Mass amid the devastation. Jones was, at the time, a nominal Anglican, and peered with curiosity through a crack in the planks to watch the ritual. The candles, vestments and sight of tough soldiers kneeling humbly to receive the host communicated to him: “two points of flickering candlelight, white altar cloths and a few huddled figures in khaki.” He felt that in watching these men ‘receiving Christ’ he was witnessing a moment of serenity, meaning and value in a place where the world had suffered three years of anguish, destruction and madness.
Returning from the war, at Westminster School of Art he was working close to Westminster Cathedral, which he began to visit regularly to attend services. (His future colleague Eric Gill had been producing and installing his Stations there between 1913 and 1918.) Through David’s visits to the Cathedral and seeking tu understand faith he met and was instructed by the charismatic Father John O'Connor (a friend of GK Chesterton who became to the model for the character of Father Brown in Chesterton's stories). Fr. O’Connor received David Jones into the Catholic Church in 1921 and introduced him to the community of Catholic artists and craftspeople around Eric Gill in Ditchling. Gill had moved to Ditchling with his apprentice Joseph Cribb in 1907. Desmond Chute and Hilary Pepler soon joined them. In 1921, they year that Jones was attracted to join them, they founded the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, a Roman Catholic community based on the concept of a medieval guild to support and promote the works of artists and craftsmen. (Unfortunately women were not allowed into membership of the guild until 1972, just 17 years before the guild was wound up in 1989.)
Initially Gill encouraged David Jones to train as a carpenter, but he proved unskilled in that trade, so he took up wood engraving, where he worked in close collaboration with Hilary Pepler. Pepler had himself been introduced to lettering by Gill and had moved to Ditchling in 1916 to set up the St Dominic's Press. Following the traditions and principles of Morris, Ruskin and the Arts and Crafts Movement, they focused on traditional hand-press printing for their publications rather than automation. Jones soon began to produce a number of small wood-engravings as book illustrations for the St. Dominic's Press. He later illustrated books for the Golden Cockerel Press, to which Gill introduced him. (In 1925 he engraved their Cockerel logo. Jones's major illustrated books include wood engravings The Book of Jonah, The Chester Play of the Deluge, Gulliver's Travels, Aesop's Fables, a Welsh translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes [Llyfr y Pregethwr] and an individual image for T. S. Eliot's The Cultivation of Christmas Trees.)
A former Quaker, Pepler too was received into the Catholic Church. His son married Gill’s daughter, but after Gill’s move to Capel-y-ffin Pepler and Gill never resumed their former friendship. Desmond Chute who had met Gill in 1918 and moved to Ditchling as a stone-carver and engraver, left the guild to enter the priesthood in the same year as Jones joined in 1921, but he gave him some training in wood carving and engraving and retained contact with the community. Chute retired to Italy due to health problems and there became a member of Ezra Pound’s circle of friends,
In Ditchling as well as printmaking Jones produced some murals for the newly-built Guild chapel, begun in 1919 and completed by February 1922. His panel of Christ mocked by soldiers, shows them dressed in the uniforms of English ‘Tommies’, reflecting his wartime experiences, and perhaps some of his scars.
The community of the Guild of St. Joseph and St. Dominic was committed to the Roman Catholic faith and lived domestically, supporting one another in community. Influenced by Ruskin and Morris, they rejected capitalist industrialism, but like Christopher Dawson and Max Weber they believed that Protestantism was partly responsible for decline in value and a revival of Catholic spiritual principles would enhance the progress of society. The Guild promoted work and faith, based on the Distributionist ’ theories of G.K.Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc and Fr. Vincent McNabb’s teaching on social idealism. They were also influenced by the ideas of Ananda Coomaraswamy, the Indian writer on spirituality, the arts and society, who added a more universally-orientated intellectualism to their pursuits. McNabb, Prior of the Dominican House of Studies at Hawkesyard, Staffs. was their main introduction to the Dominican Tertiary Order. However McNabb was also understandably uncomfortable with Gill’s emphasis on sensuality and the beauty of the body. The Guild’s ethos was engraved on a stone plaque: “Men rich in virtue studying beautifulness living in peace in their houses”. (This seems ironic in the light of more recent revelations of Gill’s promiscuity.) Jones described the group as a “religious fraternity for those who make things with their hands”. Jones became a Dominican Tertiary with the Guild in 1923 but left in December 1925 to join Gill in Wales. Gill split with the Guild of SS. Joseph and Dominic in 1924 and moved with his family and some followers to a rambling former monastery at Capel-y-ffin near Abergavenny.
Gill’s influence on the young man was strong. Jones moved to Capel-y-ffin temporarily at the end of 1925 partly through Gill’s influence but also through attraction to Gill’s daughter. He spent much of the years 1924 to 1927 visiting the Gills and their followers there. Jones and Gill’s daughter Petra became engaged, but she broke off the engagement in 1927 and David Jones never formed another relationship in which he considered marriage. Their relationship between the two must have been one of contrasts; it would have been challenging for the vivacious, already-sexually-experienced Petra to consider permanent involvement with the introverted and shy David Jones. He was totally committed to his hard-working career as an artist and probably displayed several signs of the traumas of war which led to a breakdown 5 years later. (We do not know whether Petra confided anything of her liaisons with her father, or whether Gill’s sexual activity with her continued during their engagement.)
Petra remained an ideal in Jones’s work for most of his career. Her high forehead and long neck remained features of Jones’s ideal of female attraction, reappearing in most of the women in his paintings. Perhaps the most dramatic representation is the dominant ‘Aphrodite in Aulis’ [1941 Tate Gallery] whose strong thighs and breast dominate her elegant feet and hands, strong neck and smaller head. Originally Jones intended this to represent Phryne of Athens “the sum of all beauty”, but in the making she became “a nice girl”, a metaphor for what attracted him physically and emotionally. Only later did the artist transform the theme into Aphrodite on Aulis, where Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia for fortune in his expedition to Troy. The goddess, standing on an altar, at the centre of an apse of broken classical architecture. Adoring birds fly round her but in the context they resemble fighting planes. Censed by a priest, she has been chained by one ankle, but the chain is broken. Originally the altar was to have the inscription: “De divina pulchritudine esse omnium derivatur” ‘All derives from divine beauty’ [Pseudo-Dionysius]. This was replaced by a relief of a sacrificial lamb, bringing a further Christian association into the painting and its theme about how false ideals can lead to warfare. The lamb has an Ankh Cross around its neck. Around the female figure are ranged the chaos of war: a Trojan ship and a modern warship, Trojan warriors and horses, with contemporary British and German soldiers in the foreground. The latter watch each other; both are partly naked and wounded, perhaps dead, with flowers growing from a helmet or gun
Gill’s community at Capel-y-ffin did not survive long in the isolated setting and they left in 1928. Jones developed his career elsewhere. He returned to London in 1924, but in 1925 returned to Wales several times to visit the Gills at Capel-y-ffin and the Benedictines at Caldey Island.
The remainder of Jones’s life, though active, was financially and emotionally precarious. In 1927 he returned to live full-time with his parents in the family home in Brockley until the mid-1930s. The house and garden feature in several works. He continued to visit Capel-y-ffin and Caldey, Portslade near Hove and holidayed with the Gills in France. For a while his work was prolific, producing engravings for the Golden Cockerel Press and painting fluently and fluidly. He successfully exhibited Welsh seascapes and drawings at the St George's Gallery and watercolours of France at the Goupil Gallery. He also joined and exhibited with the Society of Wood Engravers. However, from the late 1920s his eyesight began to fail, leaving him unable to continue the close, subtle work of printmaking, so he focused more on painting and writing.. His artistic circle expanded in 1928 when from 1928 to 1935 became a member of the Seven and Five Society, mixing with other modernist artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Frances Hodgkins, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Cedric Morris, John Piper, Christopher Wood and the collector Jim Ede.
Delayed wartime memories of his experiences brought on nervous illness, which began to affect him mentally for the remainder of his life and career, influencing his art and writing. Working on the first draft of In Parenthesis reawakened tensions and in 1932 Jones suffered a severe nervous breakdown. Its results delayed the publication of In Parenthesis for 3 years and sadly caused a block in creativity which prevented him from painting his best works for several years.
However, the artwork that he had already produced, and that which he struggled to produce grew in popularity and he was included in the Venice Biennale [1934] and the New York World Fair [1939], with a British touring exhibitions of his work in 1944 and 1954.
Jones suffered his second major breakdown in 1947, while staying with the patron of modern artists and poets Helen Sutherland at Cockley Moor. (Her collection of works was eventually inherited by the David Jones scholar and collector Nicolete Gray.) Jones moved to undergo treatment in a nursing home near Harrow, and left the home after therapy feeling much stronger in body and spirit and more confident. As part of the therapy he was encouraged to paint and draw. After the healing process he decided to move close-by into a boarding house in Harrow, staying there until 1964. In 1954 the Arts Council toured a second exhibition of his work through Britain, showing at Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Swansea, Edinburgh and the Tate Gallery in London.
Meanwhile his writing also gained in confidence. The praise of The Anathemata [1952] encouraged dramatized productions of both The Anathemata and In Parenthesis on the radio, produced by a champion of Jones, Douglas Cleverdon, (who went on to re-publish several of his best books of wood engravings and the complete catalogue and survey of his prints). The Anathemata was only intended as part of a much longer poem, of which Jones wrote sections, eventually published unfinished as ‘The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments’ [1974]. Two posthumous volumes of poetry followed: The Roman Quarry [1981] and three shorter poems in ‘Wedding Poems’ [2002]. Another collection of his prose The Dying Gaul and Other Writings was published posthumously in 1978.
David Jones’s later life in Harrow was fairly lonely, despite his many acquaintances and admirers. Above his bed he hung the words “hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt: vigilemus.” These words are the opening of the long epic 2966 line poem by Bernard of Cluny: De Contemptu Mundi (On Contempt for the World) or ‘The Heavenly Jerusalem’, inspired by the last two chapters of the Revelation of St. John. It particularly focuses on Rev. 21.3-4: "Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them….There will be no more pain, for the former things have passed away". This must have felt particularly relevant to Jones after some of the damages of his damaged life. Bernard’s hymn was translated into English as ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ by John Mason Neale : “Brief life is here our portion; Brief sorrow, short lived care; The life that knows no ending, The tearless life, is there."
The whole first verse of the poem would have been meaningful to David Jones in his last days as he obviously meditated regularly on the meaning of the words in Latin:
“Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt; vigilemus.
Ecce, minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus.
Imminet, imminet, ut mala terminet, æqua coronet,
Recta remuneret, anxia liberet, æthera donet.
Imminet, imminet!”
[“This very hour, the worst of times are here. Keep watching!.
Behold! Here comes, the Judge, with serious face; He is the supreme arbiter
He comes, He comes! Those who have done wrong will have their end, the good He’ll crown.
Now He repays the right and frees the scared from fear; His gifts He brings….
He comes, He comes!”]
When the composer Igor Stravinsky visited Jones in the 1950s, he described the artist as living in a simple bedsit, surrounded by his possessions, arranged close to his mattress in military order, ‘still living as if he was confined to a wartime bunk’. However, this ‘order’ around him was not as organised and Stravinsky thought. Many friends recorded him making futile searches through stacks of papers and books for pieces of remembered information [Miles 1990 p.33]. His friend, the poet and scholar Peter Levi SJ, speaking at David Jones’s Requiem in Westminster Cathedral explained: “David Jones had a devoted, suffering life. He was full of gaiety and sweetness throughout many years of physical and mental illness. He was the friendliest and most loving of human beings and he was terribly lonely. ...yet he was possessed continually by the drifting light of an unexplained hope”.
As his frail health declined David Jones moved into a nursing home for his last ten years, dying on 28 October 1974 (aged 78). Shortly before his death he published a collection of poems of various lengths: ‘The Sleeping Lord and other Fragments’. He is buried in Ladywell and Brockley Cemetery.
Although he was a quiet man he was well-thought of by many intellectuals, T.S. Eliot edited his work, though he complained that he put too much material in each essay - ”what is really the material for a book.” [Letter to Jones 19th Aug. 1943]. Stephen Spender, Igor Stravinsky all visited him. Stravinsky described him to Spender as ‘like visiting a holy man in his cell’. In many ways David Jones seems to have been unworldly, with certain areas of innocence but not naivety. Spender described him playing “a worn record of plain-song Gregorian chant… with hands clasped across his knees and an expression of bliss on his face”.
In the years after the Second World War Jones’s reputation grew, particularly in the field of literature. His complexity was admired by writers and critics like T.S, Eliot, Graham Greene called him "among the great poets of the century", a conclusion with which W.H. Auden and Herbert Read agreed. Igor Stravinsky wrote of him rather excessively in 1962 as "perhaps the greatest living writer in English". Kathleen Raine more realistically admitted that he was probably “too subtle and learned for popular tastes”. Though Auden considered The Anathemata “a flawed masterpiece” he also called it “the best long poem written in English in the 20th Century.” {Encounter, No 5 Feb.1954. London].
David Jones’s was made a ‘Companion of Honour’ shortly before his death, but sadly in the decade following his death, his reputation declined. In the age when abstraction, individualism, cleverness and originality was sought, art based on mythology, history or filled with literary references was not considered fashionable, valuable or sufficiently contemporary. The taste for Eliot’s work thrived, but Jones’s reputation took longer to be rediscovered. The David Jones Society, exhibitions and documentaries kept research and recognition of his value alive. He only regained popular recognition through his place as a war-poet, rather than for his more complex greater works. Jones’s name is commemorated among sixteen poets of the Great War poets on a slate unveiled in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, dedicated on 11 November 1985. Kathleen Raine was probably right that he will never become universally popular, due to his complexities, obscurities and difficulties in his work. I am not being elitist in writing this as I too still don’t understand much of his writing! Elizabeth Jenkins admitted that David Jones was “undoubtedly a difficult poet” but “he dealt with concerns beyond ‘I’ and ‘you’ or ‘here and now’” [Spectrum BBC Wales 4 Nov.1965].
DAVID JONES’S ARTWORK STYLE AND IDEAS
Following the training and ideas of Gill, David Jones considered that the artist should regard himself as an artisan craftsman more than a creator of Fine Art, and worked accordingly. He was a determined worker, keeping up a steady and innovatory output in several media throughout his career, even despite the damage to his nerves and increasing frailty. Gill had taught him ‘the holy tradition of working’ and an artisan’s modesty towards his role. Like Gill he determined not to price his work too highly.
Jones’s later work in paint is less easy to define in quality than some of his fine technical work as an engraver in the 1920s. I consider that his finest and most detailed works were the wood engravings for ‘The Chester Play of the Deluge’ (1927). His wood engravings for Gulliver’s Travels (1925) are compositionally really innovative and strong. His sensitivity and dexterity in design with line is seen in his 10 copper engravings for ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. These demonstrate his sensitivity in responding to the demands and potential of a medium which was relatively new to him. In exploring copper engraving Jones described himself as a “novice” again, discovering the demands of the medium, and finding that he responded in new ways to the subject and technique. His fluency and elegance of line was probably influenced by Gill’s own linear engravings and drawing technique. Jones wrote of “lyricism inherent in the clean, furrowed free, fluent engraved line.” He aimed not to “illustrate” but “to get in copper the general fluctuations of the poem”. To create this rhythm, he decided to design in ‘simple incised lines reinforced here and there and as sparingly as possible by cross-hatched areas’. He continued to innovate and found that he could strengthen, unify and make the linear images more subtle by not totally wiping the plate clean before printing to create “an undertone over the whole area of the plate”. Sadly, working on the copper engravings Jones recognised that his eyesight was failing and recognised that the prints would be the last he would produce. The rest of his visual art career would be confined to drawing and watercolour.
Jones’s experience in linear copper engraving particularly helped him to focus his techniques in drawing and watercolour towards a new freedom in the use of line and wash. Previously he had worked on a few small oil paintings and larger panels for the chapels at Ditchling and Capel-y-ffin. In the small oil-panel ‘The Garden Enclosed’ (1924), a title based on the Song of Songs, he celebrated his engagement to Petra. It has the strong sense of design in flat planes and distorted perspective, which he employed in the design of several wood engraving. But the multi-layered drawing and washes in his watercolours enabled him to develop a greater sense of mystery, allusion and a sense of interconnectedness between worlds and ideas. He tried to create a sense of linear rhythm, physical and spiritual light, a unified the spirit of the place, objects, scene, or people being “re-presented” and a unifying sense of ”inward continuity of sight (site)”.
From his early drawings of animals we sense that Jones felt an affinity and love for animals, which he expressed in his images. He made many visits to draw in London Zoo. In 1935 expounded on this affinity with nature, when describing a key to his life and artistic philosophy as "affection for the intimate creatureliness of things”… “a care for, and appreciation of the particular genius of places, men, trees, animals, and yet withal a pervading sense of metamorphosis and mutability”. The animals in his works are often also metaphors for other sentiments. In the woodblock in my collection, (for Libellus Lapidum 1924) he and Hilary Pepler ride on the back of Pegasus, seeming to represent the flight of the imagination creativity and Christian creative ambition. The Lamb, Pelican, Unicorn and other Christian Bestiary symbols regularly recur, as does the browsing horse of the warrior. Like the love of the life in nature in the flowers that he painted, nature is celebrated both for its own value and its variety of symbolic significances and allusions.
Jones’s paintings became more complicated from the 1930s onward. He increased the size of the paper he used, included more areas of detail and used multiple-layers of transparent washes, painting far more slowly, with greater attention to what he was including or excluding, and working into the painting more fully. He also included more profuse and complex literary symbolism or allusions. As a result the works may feel more confusing and less fresh than his earlier watercolours, but they retain their sense of harmony, despite being more complicated. Sometimes he employed many quick, small strokes or a rich variety of subtle hues to create a sense of light and vibrancy of life, as in his portrait of his former fiancé as a symbol of feminine beauty in ‘Petra im Rosenhag’ (1931). The marks which over-pattern many of these compositions give the impression of the play of light and life within a picture, as well as reinforcing the impression that a life-force unites and unifies all things.
In both his art and poetry David Jones combined historical and cultural awareness, a fascination with words and metaphors, visual and rhythmic sensitivity, an interest in and care for humanity and nature, and an awareness that the best art is not obvious, but works on your senses through enigma, allusions and vague recollection of its relevance to something you cannot quite define. Like the work of T.S. Eliot, who admired and promoted David Jones. he is not easy to read or take in immediately. It takes time and familiarity for comprehension to awaken (or so I find personally.) He was working in a period when intellectual allusions were valued in art and references were common, as in the writings of Eliot, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, even Wilfred Owen. However, he was modest about his place in the art-world and in history. David Jones may not be high in the hierarchy of British modern artists like Bacon or Moore. He’s more on the level of Piper, Nash, Sutherland and his friend and colleague Eric Gill, though more difficult and complex in his art and theory than comparably skilled artists like Cecil Collins or Robin Tanner. I find his writings on art often more astute and psychologically and spiritually exploratory than many influential British theorists of art at the time, including Gill, Roger Fry, Kenneth Clark, Clive Bell, or Herbert Read.
Jones’s visual works in different genres: engravings, calligraphy and paintings are very different from each other, yet show a similar attention to subject, symbolism, detail, line, compositional sensitivity, imagination and delicacy of touch and approach. Jones’s intellectualism and knowledge in literature, history and philosophy was largely self-taught, through extensive reading and discussions with friends in the arts and the Church. He often expressed recognition of the limitations of his knowledge, though his interests and the scope of his thinking were broad. Part of the breadth of his exploration of the influences on culture came through a fascination with the writings of Oswald Spengler. He studied his work particularly during the early years of the Second World War, but apparently had been reading him earlier. (The first volume of The Decline of the West was published in Germany in 1918 and in Britain in 1926). Spengler distrusted the dominance of Classical civilization on Europe and encouraged cultural relativism and a concentration on the backgrounds to one’s own particular culture and that of the surrounding society and nation. In this he had been strongly influenced by Goethe and Nietzsche but, as a psychologist, he was suspicious of being over-Romantic in one’s approach. Jones’s work is more influenced by Romantic idealism towards his subjects and language, though this is balanced by his experiences of the horrors and pains of life. Spengler’s work gave David intellectual justification for examining (alongside Classical myths and Classical History) Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Arthurian, Grail, Judeo-Christian, Germanic sources, local and popular cultural history to explore universal and particular ideas.
However, Jones’s meticulous research was for more poetic ends than that of an historian or scholar. He used his sources for poetic effect, literary allusions and meaning rather than for scholarship. He was sometimes embarrassed or felt that he had failed when works appeared more intellectual than meaningful. Of his drawing The Lord of Venedotia [1948] he wrote “I don’t feel that it is much good – I’ve gone ‘academic’ in some way, and that distresses me.” [Letter to Saunders Lewis quoted in Miles 1990 p.59.] This lack of confidence in the work is sad yet reflects Jones’s character. In most ways the drawing is superb and one of his strongest. He may, of course have meant that, to him, it felt more like ‘academic drawing’ than a visionary feeling similar to many of his other contemporary drawings. But the imaginative portrait is not ‘academic’; it shows an ideal of Mediaeval Welsh manhood with mail and cloak, sword and hawk. ‘Venedotia’ is the Latin name of the North-West Welsh Kingdom of Gwynedd. Its leaders rose to dominance as kings of Wales. The ‘Lord’ stands upright and confident amid hills trees, herons in flight, horses and goats. Behind him the Chi-Rho symbol on a monolith surmounted by a radiant dove suggests that he may also be a model for Christian manhood, or the combination of pagan and Christian faith. If he is still unconverted, he may be a sign of those waiting to assimilate the Christian faith with the nobility of their Welsh culture. The painting dates from the beginning of his work on The Anathemata, written between 1948 and 1951. The Lord of Venedotia’s identity may be found in footnotes to The Anathemata [1952 p.71-72]. There Jones referred to a Roman Briton warrior prince Cunedda Wledig from the district of the Otadini or Votadini in South Scotland. He became Christianised and established rule in Wales c400C.E. in the age of St. Ambrose, presumably at the Romans’ invitation. He established a dynasty of Welsh kings that lasted for nine centuries. In this painting the Lord of Venedotia has become part of his land; his robe, hair, armour, unshaved beard, the torc around his neck and brooch share the same textures and colours as the landscape, and the worn sense of being part of the history of the land. He is the epitome of a man who is at one with his nature, faith, background and role in the world.
Through the various cultures that David Jones combined in his works, he reflected on different aspects of the age which influenced him. Between the wars Britain developed and changed in its awareness of, and attitude to, its cultural past, particularly when so much in society and in cultural artefacts had been affected or threatened by war. Wales grew in a sense of its particular and individual identity and the nation’s valuing of its cultural heritage. Research into its mythology and cultural past advanced. David Jones was part of this trend, fascinated by the stories which give identity to nations and their culture. The death of Llewelyn in 1282 was political defeat for the Welsh, but also damaged the development of the individuality of their culture. Jones likens it to the defeat of Troy and the death of Arthur. David Jones did not concern himself with fighting for Welsh politics, but he was interested in retaining and reviving the culture so that the people would understand their identity. What they ‘imagined’ Wales to be, through its myths and ideas, was as important as its history - a “sacred heritage” [David Jones article in Planet 21 - Tregaron 1974 p.5]. This could also be related to faith. Where God is invisible, what we imagine God, faith, our own identity or the nature of Christ and the Eucharist to be can be as strengthening as having proof.
He applied a growing interest in historical method to the making of art. Though Jones’ experiences of serving and being wounded in the Great War left him traumatised and thoughtful, he focused this creatively. During the decades that followed he tried to find themes and a style for his art, which would help him express his response and to formulate more universal ideas which grew from his studies. The process of formulating his ideas and images strained both his eyesight and his mental health but he remained committed to his art, especially through the encouragement given to him by his new-found faith, the communities of artists with which he mixed, and the positive response to his literary and visual work.
Jones wanted to find literary and visual styles in which he could explore, reflect-on and “show forth” how the human, animal and spiritual world were interconnected. His ideas are sometimes possibly more ambitious than his visual skills were able to create. The deliberate naivety of form or style in some of his wood-engravings for the St. Dominic Press does not often convey the depth of thought and ideas behind the work. His watercolours, sensitive as they are, rarely manage to reach the compositional standard and strength of his engravings. This may be because engraving demanded far greater discipline and planning, whereas his drawing and painting is often more fluid and spontaneous in its mark-making.
In the army Jones had worked for a short while as a cartographer and he tried at times, particularly in 1943, to create “maps of the artist’s mind”. They chart the different aspects and directions of his thinking and influences, following the links and paths by which these ideas became associated. At the time art-historians and historians of religion were making similar maps of the influences and interconnections by which styles and ideas developed. ‘Background to David Jones: A Study in Sources and Drafts’, a fascinating book by Jonathan Miles, unlocks these varied influences. Jones’s works in poetry, prose, or paint can sometimes feel like a maze rather or labyrinth of associated and subtly connected legends, myths, religious beliefs, geological movements, the migration of peoples, Arthurian and Celtic tales, British and European history, fascination with ancient Roman and other past influences on the nation, Celtic and Mediaeval culture and faith. His interest in geography and geology encouraged his to also see culture and history in layers of strata. His “maps of the artist’s mind” link Christianity, British culture, legend and literary heritage with Greece, Rome, Persia, Byzantium, Germany, Scandinavia, as well as the closer Celtic legends of Cornwall, and Wales. He was fascinated by the connections and interconnected links between ‘myths’, ‘history’ and what he termed “pseudo-history”. All these combined to form “the matter of Britain”, the background within which we live and understand aspects of ourselves. He was interested in getting to the facts behind history, and made multiple annotations and corrections in his books, as Miles notes [1990 p.68-9]. But the myth or beliefs behind history were equally important. Together they might point to, and make sense of complex universal needs within the human consciousness. Of the myths and pseudo-history Jones highlighted, in his 1927 copy of A.M. Hocart’s ‘Kingship’: “The poets are valuable witnesses, for they do not invent half as much as they are supposed to do, but rather turn ancient facts to poetic uses.”
He found in Classical figures from history and mythology many parallels to Christian figures, qualities or moral and ethical examples. Hector, Paris, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Helen of Troy, were those to whom he most regularly referred. In Hector David Jones drew parallels with Christ as hero, determined protector of his city. Athena the virginal ‘protectress of her people and of the violated, he related to the Virgin Mary. He was fascinated by similarities between the language used of Athena or her chryselephantine s statue in the Parthenon and metaphors and titles given by the Catholic Church to Mary: ‘House of Gold’, ‘Tower of Ivory’. ‘Stella Maris’. Both figures shared symbols, particularly the crescent-moon.
When writing of Rome, David Jones often used the Empire as an historical fact to stress the historicity of Jesus’ life. The Roman army recurs regularly in his works, in relation to his own experiences in the Great War, their persecution and sacrifice of Christ, their occupation of Palestine, and the domination of military might and military principles over a conquered world. He was interested in the process by which Mars may have changed from a god of agriculture to a god of war and refers to this in The Roman Quarry [p.37]. Mars’s legendary rape of Illia mother of Romulus and Remus became a symbol for him of the human inheritance of war-like behaviour and impulses. Were the Gods, he supposes, being altered to suit the changing principles or activities of the culture and nation? Have we done the same to our concept of the Christian God in order to justify our behaviour? In The Anathemata and The Roman Quarry Jones used the Roman calendar to date Christ’s nativity and Passion. In the penultimate part of The Anathemata Christ is associated with former agricultural role of Mars becoming the nourishing bread of the Eucharist as well as triumphing as a warrior victor over sin and death. He also drew parallels between Roman legends of the fertility season with Christ’s sacrifice, as if, like the myth of Tellus (Roman god of the earth), Christ was bringing nourishment, fertility and transformation through the shedding of his blood. Jones implied in this that Christ could do the same for our damaged contemporary world. Can the blood and bread of the Eucharist begin such transformation? It fascinated him that within the Roman Imperium the seed of a new Divine Kingdom was born, taught and grew in the person of Jesus, whose principles were so different from those of the Roman Empire.
In the inter-war years there was a revival of interest in the Arthurian legends. This was not just the Romanticism of the 19th Century revival, with a longing for ideas of chivalry and mediaeval-orientated idealism. Renewed focus on the Arthurian legends included a fascination with the psychological and spiritual longings which lay beneath the Romantic Movement and the yearning for chivalrous or righteous behaviour. Other writers explored similar ideas, like Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and T.H. White and Alan Garner in the next generation. White’s The Once and Future King, published in 1958, revised and expanded his earlier shorter Arthurian novels published between 1938 and 1940. White did not just retell the Arthurian stories in a popular way, he explored the motivations of characters an made comparisons with the present day (since Merlin lives his life backwards in time and alludes to modern issues (aeroplanes, tanks, telegraphs, Hitler, etc.) to show the relevance of the past to the present world, previously considered civilized, now recovering from the misery and chaos of the Second World War. David Jones’s aims were similar, though with more of a focus on Christian spirituality. The links between Arthurian legends and Christianity have been strong since mediaeval times and the legend of the Grail expanded by the monks of Glastonbury. They had been focused by nationalism to present Imperial Britain as a nation particularly blessed by God. Jones expanded on this for a more universal idea of Christian spirituality. He united the ideals of chivalry, miraculous spiritual powers like the Grail, the sanctity and holiness of love, and the unifying nature of an ideal reign of the Arthurian Kingdom as metaphors for our psychological longings and the quest for a utopian Kingdom of Heaven. When Douglas Cleverdon attempted to commission Jones to illustrate and edition of Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, he sadly refused, claiming that it would take a lifetime’s work to do justice to it and make its relevance to the present apparent in his art: “I hate to feel not equal to a decent task… It requires almost a life’s work for a modern person to extract what is ‘essential’ and eternal from the Morte Arthur and free it from chain-mail-sword-knight-lady-pennon-castle-serf=romance-gothic-cloth of god-chessboard business” [Letter 16th May 1929 Tate Archive].
Jones’s search to understand and express our background and underlying needs may have been awakened or at least deepened by his mental problems after the trauma of war and ways of facing and treating memories. Amid mental distress he describes experiencing challenges and a spiritual epiphany which awakened new ideas and faith in him, as earlier on the Western Front. He continued to explore and examine these in his notebooks and through his completed work. In Parenthesis was the first major fruit of this attempt to understand, make connections and come to conclusions about a wealth of disparate ideas and memories. In his 1938 acceptance speech for the Hawthornden Prize, which he won for In Parenthesis, he claimed that writing the book had clarified his thoughts on the interconnected nature of human spiritual and physical need and helped him to relate them to the context of history, literature and myth: “I felt, more clearly than before, the unity of the Arts.”
Jones converted to Catholicism in 1921 after his demobilisation from the army and the beginnings of his attempt to make sense of the war. As his faith developed in understanding of the different layers of meaning within the mystery of the Eucharist, he came to consider the Mass as a metaphor or image for the way that an event, action or artwork can epitomise and hold within itself many layers of truth. The needs which the Catholic Mass nourished helped him resolve his thoughts on the human needs, which legends, history and ‘pseudo-history sought to fulfil or reach towards. He found a sense of peace and meaningfulness in taking the Eucharist, and believed that it resolved many of the needs of the human soul, The Eucharist remained a ‘mystery’; it didn’t explain everything but nevertheless made sense of life, longings, spiritual searching, suffering, even the suffering and ugliness that he had witnessed and been sensitised to in the trenches.
David Jones’s linking of theology and art was encouraged by Gill and the circle at Ditchling, but he took it further. His theory of aesthetics was founded in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Maritain, who was in vogue in Catholic theological and artistic circles throughout the mid-20th Century A revival in interest in Aquinas was promoted by Leo XIII’s encyclical ‘Aeterni Patris’ in 1879 and developed through the early 20th Century, leading to a revival of Catholic scholasticism, intellectual life and Catholic arts. Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism had been translated in 1923 by Fr. John O’Connor, who had been so instrumental in Jones’s conversion, and who had influenced Gill’s ideas. Maritain’s Religion and Culture 1931 encouraged a revival in Catholic intellectualism. In Epoch and Artist [p.172] Jones discussed the influence of all of these.
The multi-layered mystery of the Mass became linked in Jones’s ideas to the process involved in making his art. Jones wrote many essays explaining his ideas on art, literature, faith and history, collected into two volumes: ‘Epoch and Artist’ [1959] and ‘The Dying Gaul [1978] To me, two of the most meaningful essays are ‘Art and Sacrament’ (in Epoch and Artist) and ‘Use and Sign’ (in The Dying Gaul), where he explained the connections that he felt between what the artist is creating in his/her art, with its signs and symbolism and activity and parallels with the Eucharistic liturgy. He wrote of creativity as a high calling that raises human beings above other natural creatures, reflecting the image of God as Creator within us. The priest in the liturgy and ritual of the Mass brought together Jewish and Christian history, tradition, theology, doctrine and reflected Christ’s actions at the Last Supper, and his self-offering at Calvary. In a similar way, Jones believed that the artist, in creating, brings together various understandings of art, life, and his/her perceptions of reality to create a different form of reality. Since Post-Impressionism modernist styles were not merely copying nature, they were trying to make reality seem more real thought stylistic and formal inventions and innovations. Since the writings of theorists like Roger Fry and Clive Bell this was the main emphasis in thinking about art in the college and artistic circles in London, which influenced the development of Jones’s own theories. As a Catholic he was committed to his belief in the doctrine of the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in the Eucharist. He believed the Priest through his liturgy and the involvement of God’s Spirit was making the presence of Christ apparent. Similarly the artist, Jones considered, could make reality present in his visual art. He was not just creating metaphors for reality, his art aimed to bring the hidden meanings behind reality to the fore and make them visible. Jones expressed this artistic aim as to “make substantially and really present in one’s medium what already is” … to “give a mode to that which exists modelessly.” “… painting must be a thing and not the impression of something [it] has affinity with what the Church said of the mass, that what was oblated under the species of bread and wine at the supper was the same thing as what was bloodily immolated on Calvary.”
Jones also related the Christian idea of ‘anamnesis’ within the Mass (“Do this in remembrance of me!”) to the artist bringing to memory essentials of the essence and meaning of his subjects, even bringing them to life, in himself and the viewer. In ‘Rite and Fore-Time’ he explores the idea that we might even bring to mind what is in the human subliminal, ancestral or collective memory. The Anathemata and The Sleeping Lord also explore aspects of this, relating ancestral memory to a Welsh Palaeolithic cave burial at Paviland, overlooking the Bristol Chanel.. The pre-history of human searching for a relationship with God may be part of a common inner longing. Searching for connections with the religions and cultures of the past had fascinated many, from James Frazer’s The Golden Bough [1922] to psychologists, Theosophists, historians, art-historians, philosophers and theologians. Christopher Dawson, one of Jones’s sources had explored the ideas in The Age of the Gods [1928], as did Ananda Coomaraswamy. Works like Jones’s Ariadne in Aulis draw parallels between Classical ideals of beauty, the pre-historic Venus of Willendorf, the Virgin Mary and the modern woman.
Given this sacramental idea and his belief in the universal the importance of what the artist was creating, it is not surprising that Jones approached his artistic practice with such seriousness of intent and care. He produced his work with great attention to detail, historic research, meaning, valuing of his subjects, precision and delicacy. He called the artist’s and the priest’s activity a “re-presentation” of reality.
Gill’s influence in Jones’s early days as a professional artist instilled in him the crucial principle that art must ‘proceed from the known’. He encouraged Jones to continue producing figurative work and to develop a hard-working, craftsman-like attitude, which remained with Jones throughout his career, despite periods of mental illness and breakdowns. Gill at first encouraged him to try a career in carpentry, but he proved unskilled, so turned to wood-engraving at which he soon excelled and became inventive. He did not imitate Gill but developed his own distinctive styles. By 1924 Jones’s work had moved away from Gill’s linear simplicity, emphasis on medievalism and craftsmanship. He was developing a personal engraving techniques and styles, exploring new ways of painting and designing in watercolour. He also expanded upon Gill’s ideas of the artist’s possible place in and contribution to society, and the links between faith and art. However the fact that he was developing in all of these directions partly stemmed from the influence of Gill, and the training and ideas developed within the Guild community at Ditchling. His sense of composition also built upon his former training at Westminster Art School.
Despite his high aims. Jones’s character was not that of an artist who was ‘precious’ about his art. He was a relatively humble man; he lived quietly and admitted that even the best art by the finest artists is relatively useless in practical terms. Some modesty in of his ideas about the ‘workmanship’ of art developed through his association with Eric Gill. Gill believed that the artist should regard himself as a artisan or craftsman, not over-promote his status or over-charge for his work. Art for Jones was an act that was unique to human beings. He believed that we should express gratitude for our sensitivity to beauty and aesthetic appreciation. It is an artist’s duty to develop this, to work to deepen one’s skills and sensibilities, to help to raise human minds above the mundane and enhance society One of the reasons behind Jones's printmaking was to be able to distribute good art relatively affordably and accessibly. Art, he wrote, is a “gratuitous” activity. He gave away many images of his works.
One watercolour for which Jones did ask a high price was Vexilla Regis. It’s title ‘The Triumph-banners of the King’ derives from the great Latin hymn of Christ’s Passion, attributed to Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, written for the procession of a relic of the True Cross to his cathedral in 596 C.E.. The price which Jones asked for his painting Vexilla Regis was intended to prevent its sale, so he could retain the work, which meant much to him as almost a personal, visual, creedal statement. Within a scene of trees, gathered around one main central tree are many signs and symbols: The tree-trunk is embedded with nails. With the glowing crown of entangled thorn-branches at the base of the tree these point to this painting as a sign of Christ’s Cross. On the trees to either side are other Christian symbols: The Pelican on its nest, feeds its young from its blood. The Eagle was a sign both of Christ’s proximity to God as the bird who flies closest to the sun, and a sign of Christ’s incarnation and death and resurrection in plummeting to earth then rising up from the sea. Horses or ponies inhabit the grove of trees, perhaps symbols of faithfulness, the help-metes of human beings, or the horses of the Roman army still present in memory. ---A trumpet, curved like Roman war-trumpets blown in triumph-processions lies on the floor of the forest, perhaps abandoned now that Christ has brought peace, or waiting for us to lift and blow in praise or glory. The way that Jones expanded the compositions of major drawings like this to fill the paper to its edges with detail reflected the intensity of patterning in Celtic manuscripts and the interwoven structure and detail of medieval Welsh poetry.
When Jones eventually agreed to sell the painting he wrote a long explanation of its contents, as he perceived them, while modestly recognising and accepting that viewers might find other meanings within his works: “The general idea of the picture was also associated, in my mind, with the collapse of the Roman world. The three trees as it were left standing on Calvary—the various bits and pieces of classical ruins dotting the landscape—also older things, such as the stone henge or “druidic” circle a little to the right of the right-hand tree in the distance and then the Welsh hills more to the right again, the rushing ponies are, more or less, the horses of the Roman cavalry, turned to grass and gone wild and off to the hills… “I should like to make plain that none of this symbolism is meant to be at all rigid, but very fluid—I merely write down a few of the mixed ideas that got into this picture as you were kind enough to ask.” [My thoughts] “were less explicitly intended than perhaps it sounds, when written down, and there is much other stuff besides.”
David Jones believed that all parts of God’s Creation are already valuable, so the artist only highlights aspects of nature and truth by drawing attention to them. Perhaps he might occasionally add lustre to what some merely view as mundane. In drawing through simple lines he stressed that the ‘outline’ of an object was never intended as a definitive explanation or conclusion about the subject. He intended it as a starting-point for the viewer to consider the importance and meaning of the subject. The line or image “ is no more a stopping place than is the sea’s horizon. It is really all a question of feeling that truth intensely enough.” Similarly he wanted his poetry to be the beginning of the reader’s exploration, not confined to his own definitive statements on subjects. His second published poem, The Anathemata (1952), far more complex than In Parenthesis, was published with multiple footnotes, explaining the allusions within it. The Anathemata is a symbolic overview of Western culture. It was partly inspired by a visit to Palestine in which he made associations between the Ancient Roman occupation of Israel and the current British governance and occupation of the region. In the long poem he combined local Levantine mythology and history with British history and mythology. Despite clarifying his sources in multiple footnotes David Jones emphasised that he did not want to determine the reader’s interpretation or imaginative response. Rather he wanted to help his readers to follow the paths of thought and discover within themselves many similar influences upon their own cultural identity and how it had developed, making our own associations and interconnections. He wanted us to recognise that our era, epoch or culture has developed through various stages to where we. Many sources have conditioned our formation, so understanding them might help us to develop creatively and expand our responses. Although he was interested in finding universally relevant themes, he recognised that some of his readers would not have the same backgrounds, or the same awareness of their cultural inheritance. He was not being culturally elitist, but wanting others to share his joy and fascination with aspects of culture that might serve to unify people, and which he felt could be universal.
Christianity was one aspect of world culture which Jones believed could unify society and prevent the horrors which he had experienced in war. He was perhaps being naïve in relating this to the Palestinian theme in The Anathemata, since the political faith divisions in that region have torn it apart for centuries, particularly in present times. However he believed that the self-sacrificial love which was at the centre of his faith could be the unifying principle which brought disparate people to value one another, appreciate their various cultures and live in peace. His last words in The Anathemata, referring to the Last Supper and Cross, challenge the reader to consider and accept what Jesus achieved through his loving self-sacrifice, as the fulcrum on which life, the future and salvation and unity depend:
“What did he do other
recumbent at the garnished supper?
What did he do yet other
riding the Axle Tree?”
As a poet and lover of literature, who valued the levels of meaning in the words of the liturgy, David Jones became fascinated by the ways in which words carry and communicate meaning. His painted inscriptions, which he called “my form of abstraction”. His letter-forms were freer and less formal than the calligraphy and type-faces which he had learned under Gill and Pepler, which had been devised for more formal purposes. To convey his particular sense of spirituality he built upon uncial and other creative manuscript lettering, which related more to the Celtic than Classical past. These letter-forms, he also felt, were closer to British and Welsh culture. Most of his inscriptions were not intended for sale, but to be “gratuitous”: During the Second World War he sent photographs of them to many friends, often as Christmas presents. To him they suggested the passing on of a blessing. He called these inscriptions “living lettering.” Often they reproduce texts from the Latin liturgy or Latin hymns with which he was familiar, and which had so many different layers of meaning for him. Other inscriptions which he chose were similarly multi-layered in their associations and meanings, whether in Greek, Welsh, or Anglo-Saxon. On the back of the photographic cards, which he made of them, he explained their meaning. The artist’s role in making them, he regarded as being a ”secretary to the Author in Eternity”. By highlighting the words or quotations Jones was again “drawing attention to” or “shining light on” inherent meanings and details which already existed in the world, which might be otherwise overlooked and their value missed.
Jones meditated on the words of each inscription before highlighting and bringing them to life in calligraphy and colour. Over an opaque pigment of Chinese White base he carefully laid out the words in pencil. The form or breaks in words often suggest further meanings. Take for example: ‘QUIA PER INCARNATI VERBI… ’ “For by the mystery of the Word made flesh the light of thy glory has shone anew upon the eyes of our mind.” He breaks the word “INCARNATI” between the “C” and “A” giving emphasis to the theological implication of that which was ”in God” breaking away and becoming part of the world ‘in human flesh’. The effect is to try to make the fact of the incarnation “shine anew” in the reader’s mind. The break also reflects the fracturing of the Host in the Mass. The colours with which he picked out his letters are also often significant. Even the bends and curves in the borders or letters are intentional, like optical equivalents to the ‘entasis’ distortions in Greek architecture, intended to draw attention to the clarity of the construction.
David Jones’s paintings also contain much intentional significance and symbolism. Many of his later paintings are views from his window. He often took a high perspective viewpoint, in order to pattern the view beyond, as many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters had done. But he was not so much closely reproducing nature as and reinterpreting or “re-presenting” it to draw attention to a spiritual or significant presence within his subject or within the world. He was also fascinated by the modern relevance of historically important Christian symbols. The Ship, the Vexilla Regis, the Pelican and the Unicorn particularly intrigued him. He represented the Unicorn with its horn lowered healing or absorbing the poison from the water. This to him, like the Pelican, the Unicorn was a sign of self- sacrifice, which he also used as a symbol of himself as an artist, seeking to draw imagery from the world and re-present it in ways that could be healing and positive. There is a life-affirming vitality and thought behind his modestly-created artwork.
Eric Gill in his Last Essays (1942) called David Jones’s work “ a combination of two enthusiasms, that of the man who is enamoured of the spiritual world and at the same time as much enamoured of the material body in which he must clothe his vision.’” This probably says as much about Gill’s own preoccupations as that of Jones. David Jones was more visionary in his attempt to express in various forms, media and symbols – “the universal thing showing through the particular thing”.
Even though Jones’s work is figurative and saturated in traditional Christian faith and ancient cultures, he was definitely a ‘modernist’ and worked with many innovatory ideas. For much of his creative career his aim to express his vision of ‘universal’ things was different from the preoccupations of many of his more overtly ‘modernist’ contemporaries. Clive Bell had emphasised that Post-Impressionism had taught the artist to create “significant form”. Jones’s forms were definitely ‘significant’ but not sufficiently revolutionary for some contemporary artists and critics, which is partly why his reputation dwindled so fast. He did not impose his ideas or style on his art but developed his style from his subjects. He tried to create a feeling that the object or image was “sacramental” and had eternal spiritual value, even if the art that highlighted it was ephemeral. Each figure or object was itself a sacred reality because it was created or existed in God’s world. Such specific faith in Christianity was not fashionable among many modernist art theorists, though throughout the 20th Century several significant modernist artists, with no particular commitment to belief, produced works on religious subjects: (Picasso, Matisse, Moore, Bacon, Germaine Richter as well as those with committed faith – Rouault, Sutherland, Piper, Spencer.) Modernist art theorists also rejected ideas that contemporary art could be illustrative or literary, though artists like Picasso, Matisse, Miro often illustrated literature and made allusions to it in their work. Van Gogh, after all, had been one of the most literary of all the Post-Impressionist influences upon them. In ways such as these, the faith and intense the intense literary influence on Jones’s images and writings set his work apart from the mainstream of Modernism.
David Jones’s major commitments in his art were to express the depth of meaning that he found within the world, the spiritual and physical value of his subjects, the value of the viewer for whom he was creating and to whom he wanted to communicate, and the value of learning from the past to make sense of and transform the present. He saw his artistic task as to draw attention to subjects and meanings that could enhance and deepen people’s perceptions of themselves and the culture which formed them. It is encouraging that an artist so damaged by war could turn the traumas of those experiences into a creativity which was intended to unify and advance our human understanding of ourselves and our culture. In this way the parallels which he drew between the artist’s creativity and Christ’s sacrifice for the good of others become clearer. Rather like the priestly task in presiding at the Mass and bringing the liturgy alive, Jones saw his artistic task as “showing forth” the meaningfulness of the world. In creating works of beauty and meaning, Jones was trying to “re-present” the value which he believed God felt for the world in which Jones had experienced and witnessed such suffering, Where people had lost touch with a sense of their creaturely value and historical and cultural perspective, he aimed to reawaken and unify their understanding of their identity and the value of all things.