Images from the Wales National Collections Are Made Available Online

Written by Mervyn Davies Tuesday, 01 November 2011 01:19

Cardiff, Wales .-  A new project to curate and digitise historic photography from Wales’ national collections has been made possible with the support of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, which is marking its 50th Birthday this year. Natural Images - Amgueddfa Cymru’s new initiative, which begins in Autumn 2011, will involve transferring the finest examples from the Museum’s extraordinary collection of around 500,000 photographs and historic items, into an accessible digital format. Items from the Museum’s photography collection are currently spread across several disciplines from geology and botany to social and industrial history and more recently, art. Wales has a proud place in the history of photography and through Natural Images, the Museum will re-assess its place within the national collection, bringing together the diverse and extraordinary images to give an overview of this rich collection.

The Museums hosts works by a wide range of photographers, some anonymous and others famous like the Welsh pioneer of photography John Dillwyn Llewelyn. One of the great strengths of Wales ’s historic photography collection is the 1,500 images and objects associated with Dillwyn Llewelyn. It includes original prints from the 1850s and examples of his pioneering and technically ambitious work with the ‘instantaneous process,’ capturing fleeting moments such as the breaking of a wave at Caswell and perhaps the earliest surviving photograph of a Guy Fawkes bonfire (c.1853). Another important aspect of the collection is albums of photographs and books on photography. The Museum not only owns a first edition of The Pencil of Nature by William Henry Fox Talbot - one of the first books to describe photography, but also images by Calvert Richard Jones, who developed his own technique for taking panoramic photographs and accompanied Fox Talbot when he toured Britain whilst working on the book.

When complete, the photographic collection will join the fine art collection, much of which is already available online. The online catalogue includes all the paintings and sculptures in the collection of the Art Department of Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museum Wales, and those on long-term loan from the Derek Williams Trust. The collection also includes around thirty thousand drawings, watercolours, prints and photographs and around eleven thousand applied art objects. Not all have yet been photographed and added to the database, but it remains an impressive selection of works. The collection of Old Master paintings just in the National MUseum in Cardiff includes, among other notable works, "The Virgin and Child between Saint Helena and St Francis" by Amico Aspertini, "The Poulterer's Shop" by Frans Snyders and "A Calm" by Jan van de Cappelle. A collection of landscape paintings in the classical tradition includes works by Claude, Gaspard Dughet, Salvator Rosa and two works by Nicolas Poussin: "The Funeral of Phocion" and "The Finding of Moses" (the latter owned jointly by the Museum and the National Gallery, London). These works prefigure the career of the Welsh-born Richard Wilson, called "the father of British landscape painting". There is a gallery devoted to British patronage of the eighteenth century, in particular that of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, who was nicknamed 'the Welsh Medici' for his lavish spending on the arts. Included is a portrait of Williams-Wynn in Rome with fellow Tourists by Pompeo Batoni, one of his second wife by Sir Joshua Reynolds and his chamber organ designed by Robert Adam.


Other paintings of note from this period is a portrait of Viscountess Elizabeth Bulkeley of Beaumaris as the mythological character Hebe, by the 'sublime and terrible' George Romney, and Johann Zoffany's group portrait of Henry Knight, a Glamorgan landowner, with his children. The collection of French art assembled by Margaret and Gwendoline Davies, granddaughters of the wealthy industrialist David Davies bequeathed to the National Museum in the 1950s and 1960s, make Wales's National Gallery one of international standing. It includes the largest group of paintings by Honoré Daumier in the world and the most important by Jean-François Millet in Britain. Works by Claude Monet include "San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk" and examples form his Rouen Cathedral and Water Lilies series. Post-impressionism is represented by Vincent Van Gogh's late work Rain at Auvers, and by Paul Cézanne's "The François Zola Dam", the first painting by the artist to be displayed in a British public collection. The two most famous works in the Davies Sisters' collection are La Parisienne by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, exhibited in the First Impressionist Exhibition, and a version of Rodin's Kiss cast in bronze.

The National Museum Cardiff (Welsh: Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd) is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales (formerly the National Museums and Galleries of Wales). Entry is kept free by a grant from the Welsh Assembly Government. The National Museum of Wales was founded in 1907, when it inherited the collection of the Cardiff Museum, which shared the building of Cardiff Central Library. Construction of a new building in the civic complex of Cathays Park began in 1912, but owing to the First World War it did not open to the public until 1927. The architects were Arnold Dunbar Smith and Cecil Brewer, although the building as it now stands is a heavily truncated version of their design. the museum has collections of archaeology, botany, fine and applied art, geology and zoology. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.museumwales.ac.uk

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