Enlightened philanthropy
Roderic Dunnett
An Art-Accustomed Eye: John Gibbs and art appreciation in Wales 1945-96 National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff until 16 January 2005 ehind this exhibition is a story of fairy1Jtale success: of the 120 Welsh shipping firms that flourished early in the last century, two of which became Wales's largest maritime company; of the merged wealth that flowed therefrom; and of the enlightened philanthropy of one man, John Morel Gibbs (1912-96), scion of both families, who saw wealth as an obligation and drew on his Methodist beliefs to become the most significant patron of art and art education in Wales, and — with Walter Hussey — of Church-art collecting in the 20th century.
The death this year of Gibbs's likeminded wife, Sheila Newton, supplied the impetus for this public exhibition. In the late 1930s, the two commissioned a Modernist home from the architect Gordon Griffiths; and, from the 1940s on, they jointly collected paintings, mostly avant-garde and sympathetic to the new building. Early acquisitions included pieces by John Piper, Paul Nash and Christopher Wood. Having lost his father at the age of five in the first world war. Gibbs encouraged his young sons from the outset to reflect on art and start col
lecting themselves. Reluctant to keep such fruits to himself, and believing that art should be whisked out of the galleries to inspire people in their everyday surroundings, Gibbs began to buy religious paintings, which ultimately formed part of the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Christian Art, for whose settingup he was largely responsible.
Not all the art the Gibbses acquired rank as masterpieces; but the Welsh painters they encouraged — Alan Lowndes, Bert Isaac, Sir Frank Brangwyn, Shani Rhys James, Ceri Richards — were significant figures in their own right. Gibbs favoured, as the catalogue by the exhibition's considerate curator Peter Wakelin points out, 'art rich in expressive imagery, psychological depth and qualities of abstraction or naive directness'. The last informs one of his earliest acquisitions, the mysterious 'Goods Train' by Richard Eurich. Dating from 1945, the picture (acquired for his sons' nursery) exudes a palpable sense of threat. Elsewhere that threat shows more obviously: in the almost nonchalant indignance of Jack Crabtree's 'Save this Pit'; or in George Chapman's 'Street in Merthyr', which like Lowndes's 'Cardiff Docks from Penarth' (1973) suggests a landscape poised to disappear for ever. Sisley's 'Penarth' is a rapt vision; David Jones's 'Pleasure Steamer' looks like no-man's land under bombardment.
Gibbs's confident choice of religious art includes not just Depositions by Sutherland (Christ faceless, neutralised) and Frank Roper, or Ceri Richards's 'Supper at Emmaus' (in bold primary colours — yellows, blues), but also a heavy-lined etching of the Baptism of Christ by Rouault and a quasi-naive miniature 'Annunciation' by Eric Gill. Norman Adams's 'Birds of Paradise Flowers and Crucifixion' has a striking tissue-paper collaged look; William Roberts's 'The Crucifixion' a Burra-like cluttered violence suggesting today's Palestine or Iraq.
A few seem more humdrum, or — like Ernest Zobole's 'Rhondda' or Shani Rhys James's oil-larded 'The Collector' — even clogged. Far more striking are the economical: 'Frying Pan and Blue Fish', an exquisite oil still life on yellow background by William Scott (1913-89), or Lucian Freud's gouache 'Chicken on a Table', with browns and light blues serving as primary colours. The two Pipers are 'Raglan Castle' and a small 'Seaton Delaval', whose Northumbrian skies lower like those over George VI's wartime Windsor.
True nostalgics should make a beeline for Kathleen Hale's hilarious pastelled crayon drawings for Orlando the Marmalade Cat, whose curvaceous outlines teased and entertained millions in the late 1930s. Two of the exhibition's real gems hail from across wide waters: Sir Sidney Nolan's 'Burke and Camel Resting in the Desert', spare browns evoking utter desolation; and a charming lino-cut, 'Dancing Masquerader', by the Nigerian artist Bruce Onobrakpeya (b.1932), whose refined patterns and scarlet hinterland place the 'ethnic' as firmly into the world of modern art as Gauguin did a century ago.
The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (closed Mondays). Tel: 029 2039 7951; website: www.nmgwac.uk. A fully illustrated colour catalogue is available, price £13.18 (£9.99 plus £3.19 p&p).
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