Tag: portraits
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Kyffin in Bangor
This is the edited text of a public talk given in Bangor University on Wednesday 19 November 2025 about the eleven oil paintings by Kyffin Williams housed in the University. The talk was followed by a guided tour of the paintings. Diolch am y gwahoddiad i ddod i’r Brifysgol, a’r cyfle i siarad am artist…
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Gwen John on foot for Rome
I’ve been reading Celia Paul’s painfully honest book Letters to Gwen John, a series of imaginary messages to her fellow-artist, dead for almost a hundred years. She shares many circumstances with Gwen, and feels many close affinities, both creative and emotional. In one of the letters, she describes a continental journey that Gwen made in…
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Two Carmarthen portraits
In Carmarthenshire Museum in Abergwili are two portraits painted in 1850 in oil on board by an artist called David Patrick. They don’t seem to have attracted much attention outside the Museum, except by Paul Joyner, but both possess a strange attraction, and deserve to be better known. Little is known about David Patrick. He…
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The bookseller of Stromness
Hanging on a wall in the public library in Stromness, where you can sit in an easy chair and enjoy a view of the waterfront through the picture window, is an oil painting called The bookseller of Stromness. It was painted in 2005 by a self-taught artist from Stornaway, Calum Morrison, who had long settled…
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Heirloom
It’s made out of a single piece of oak and sits upright on the window sill, though its planed rear and central hole suggest it was originally intended to hang on a wall. The head of an adult man or a woman. The face framed by stylised hair locks, long, straight and deeply incised, and…
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The ageing of Henri Rouart
Henri Rouart was one of Edgar Degas’ oldest and most loyal friends. They went to same school in Paris, Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and served in the artillery together during the Franco-Prussian War (Degas was an indifferent soldier). Rouart became an engineer and industrial designer, specialising in vapour-compressed refrigeration. He owned a successful company and used his…
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August Sander and his Germans
The National Museum in Cardiff is currently showing a generous selection of the portraits of August Sander, possibly the best-known large series of photographs produced in the first half of the twentieth century. It’s hard to explain how it feels to walk slowly along the gallery of figures Sander captured. Admiration at the brilliance of…
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The memory of Sir Thomas Picton
One of the many noxious elements making up the miasma of Brexiter thinking is exceptionalism. The idea that Britain is naturally superior to other countries, and that it is strong enough to stand alone against every foe, has deep roots – much deeper than the Battle of Britain, so often trundled out by politicians. If…
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Sir John Perrot: two faces of a ruffian
One of the images included in Wales in 100 objects is a small oil painting by an unknown artist, now in Haverfordwest Town Museum, of the Elizabethan magnate Sir John Perrot. I chose this particular portrait, painted long after Perrot’s death, because it shows its subject as a jaunty, stylish and dashing character, whereas in…
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The portraits of Kyffin Williams
This article is based on a talk given to The Arts Society: Brecknock in Theatr Brycheiniog, Brecon on 11 September 2018 to mark the centenary of Kyffin Williams’s birth. Introduction My starting point is a talk given by Peter Lord as the Kyffin Williams lecture for 2018 at Oriel Môn, entitled ‘The portraits of Kyffin…