David Davies: Beginnings

"Under the Burden and Heat of the Day" by David Davies

"David Davies was born in Ballarat, central Victoria, Australia, on the Yarrowee River, about 1862, of Welsh parents. Perhaps his Welsh parentage may be taken to account for his persistent endeavour to get at the inner meaning of nature, and so to present it, that in his work, apparent, matter of fact statements of reality always have, inherent in them, the mystery that pervades life.

In character he was dreamy and retiring, but industrious, and while a youth, went to Melbourne to study under the late G.F. Folingsby, who at that time also had under him Langstaff, Abbey Altson, E.P. Fox, and others who subsequently did good work. Davies settled down to hard work and learned to draw. He became so good a draughtsman that, many years later, after long abstinence from figure work, he was able, without straining his artistic powers, very creditably to execute portrait commissions.

He won no travelling scholarship, but about 1890 he went to Paris, where he studied at Julian's and, incidentally, married a fellow student. In 1893, two years after his marriage, he returned to Australia, and took up his residence at Templestowe, and there he produced a large number of pictures which, for their portrayal of an unfamiliar aspect of Australia, were altogether original.

No one before had shown on canvas that he saw the country just as this man saw it. Before he first left Australia he had painted a picture called 'The Burden and Heat of the Day,' showing two men, under a tree, behind whose shadow, in the blinding pallid glare of noon, the sun beats down on a parched and bleaching landscape, aquiver with grilling heat. Though tight of drawing, and hard as to textures and modelling, paramount in it is the feeling of relentless, steely, midsummer and its effect on the two prostrated men." 

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art and Life of David Davies" by James MacDonald, 1930.)