David Davies: A Man of Principle

"Cottages (Late Afternoon)" by David Davies

"Artists continued to buy David Davies' pictures at artists' prices, and his reputation remained where it was. Wrapped up in his work, he went on painting his dark seas, with their tumbling waves, a-frill with pearly foam, seen under a dying sky of sullen rose, in which two ash gray cloud-ships sail; or white-walled and sable-roofed, the tiny village standing in starlight, vague but palpable. 

As a by-outlet for his spiritual activity, he carved frames of restrained but rich design, and he liked to improvise at the piano, for, though not a trained musician, he was well versed in the works of the great composers, and had original views and theories on the subject of music and musical instruments. He, seemingly, was not a great reader, but on occasions would bring to light much knowledge of literary men and their performances. A disinclination to pose as an erudite man usually inhibited him from displaying any historical knowledge of the plastic arts, but among friends he threw this off and disclosed such scholarship as would be a rebuke to the ordinary painter.

The vice of painting for approbation - that easy snare of so many otherwise gifted painters - could never be attributed to him. His artistic conscience prescribed the scope and range of his attempts, and if ever he secretly had any desire to impress others by a cheap display of dexterity, with which, had he so chosen, he could have astonished them, he never did so, but always resisted the deluding temptation and subordinated even the legitimate accomplishments he owned, so that the unity and harmony of his picture might be effected, the sum of his pictorial units consolidated, and their full weight and strength ranged on the side of truth, beauty and sincerity. 

Where he differed from the bulk of painters was that he was scrupulous, that he never prostituted his faculties; and without doubt this is true of all great painters who, with a fixed and high purpose always before them, scorn the devices of the conscienceless; for conscienceless they are, well knowing that their brother brushes know of their sharp practices, but will not, for the sake of the craft's reputation, betray them."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art & Life of David Davies" by James MacDonald.)