Enlightened philanthropy

Behind this exhibition is a story of fairytale 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.