Lines of beauty | 24 September 2015

David Jones (1895–1974) was a remarkable figure: artist and poet, he was a great original in both disciplines. His was an art of ‘gathering things in’ that engaged imaginatively with history and myth, with his Welsh heritage and the Christian religion. But art also comes out of conflict, and the tension between the two sides of Jones’s creative nature was the motive force that powered so much, both visual and written.

Thus it can be misleading to separate his writing from his painting, for they form and express a single vision. However, Jones is presently most celebrated for his writing, particularly his first world war epic poem, In Parenthesis. Before that was published, in 1937, he was known as a painter and engraver, described by Kenneth Clark as ‘in many ways the most gifted of all the younger English painters’. After In Parenthesis was hailed by T.S. Eliot as ‘a work of genius’, and by W.H. Auden as ‘a masterpiece’, Jones was feted as a writer, with his painting taking a secondary role. This is unfair, but the English have always been happier with literature than visual art.

As a first-generation modernist poet, Jones was neatly classifiable, but of course he fled the pigeonhole by being an artist of great distinction as well. This book is dedicated to reassessing Jones as painter and printmaker, and restating the case for his serious consideration. As such, one of its chief joys is the wide range of illustrations, while the accompanying text is both readable and informative.

Ariane Bankes and Paul Hills have sensibly divided the narrative and analysis of Jones’s life in art between them. Hills actually knew Jones in later years and Bankes has a long-standing admiration for his art; their combination makes a book at once authoritative and enthusiastic.