Gallery Brochure

KYFFIN WILLIAMS PAPER TO PALETTE KNIFE 14 SEPT – 7 OCT 2018

HIGHGATE GALLERY @ HLSI 11 SOUTH GROVE LONDON N6 6BS HIGHGATE SCHOOL MUSEUM SOUTHWOOD LANE LONDON N6 5EE

NOTE FROM THE SPONSOR This brochure catalogues the Kyffin Williams centenary exhibitions in two key sites in the heart of Highgate Village: Highgate Gallery at the HLSI in South Grove and the Highgate School Museum in Southwood Lane. I was taught by Kyffin at Highgate School and, like many others still living in the area, have vivid memories of him. Savills are proud to be associated with this significant and ambitious event.

Simon Edwards HLSI Management Committee; Consultant, Savills

Farmer with a Gun and Dog In a monograph published by Oriel Môn, Kyffin maintained that: “The true mountain people are the hill farmers, hardy men and women who keep their sheep high up among the rocks, the screes and the grassy slopes above their valley farms. These are the heroes of Gwynedd...” He also explained in a British Library interview: “Sometimes when you are out in the mountains in the wind you can’t handle ink, because ink gets blown all over the place, and you have to draw in pencil.” It took Kyffin – “a 6B draughtsman not an HB draughtsman” – a long time to learn to draw to his satisfaction but his firm belief in the importance of the skill is reflected today in the triennial Drawing Prize Competition organised by the Sir Kyffin Williams Trust in Wales.

FOREWORD Foreword by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales from Kyffin: A Celebration, Gwasg Gregynog, 2007. Reprinted by permission.

The Kyffin Williams who taught art for many years at Highgate School in North London was an enthusing, inspiring figure. With his slightly larger than life persona, the high voice, the bold suits, the faux

irascibility, he was perhaps a bit like the middle-aged Sickert. But the true Kyffin Williams, surely, was the older man: the Kyffin Williams of Gwynedd and first and last - Ynys MĂ´n.

All landscape painters know the tug of their special places - birthplace perhaps, native land no doubt, but, most of all, the country of the heart.

For Kyffin Williams this was the land of black and green, skies the colour of dirty putty. In his paintings, so

The watercolours and pencil drawings are closer, in a way, to the way Kyffin Williams conducted himself in public. They are lively, deft, conveying the quick impression as distinct from the measured, layered statement.

Here we have the sharp observation couched in practised language.

Effortless, one might assume, except that this sort of draughtsmanship only comes about by constant practice and instinctive editing.

Where the paintings are apt to show long term effects - the shaping of land by the prevailing elements - the watercolours catch things waspishly, doggedly, brightly. The artist notes (and one can almost hear the schoolmasterly muttering from under the moustache as he works) the set of the shoulders, the obstinate angle of the flat cap, the scurrying of the attendant collie, the promise of worse weather to come.

firmly worked (the paint spread by palette knife with the expertise of a touch-sensitive plasterer), he created a Welshness of lyrical understatement. His houses settle themselves into the hillsides; his mountains impress, but never threaten. The people know where they are: shepherds go with the contours, bending into the wind.

And what winds: South Westerlies brushing the outcrops, flattening the grass, determining which way the cattle face.

Given his profound respect for tradition, Welsh tradition above all, it is no surprise that Kyffin Williams was a vehement advocate of thorough grounding in a painter’s practice.

But this was not a dismissal of other approaches. “I paint what I like for myself,” he used to say, and what others do was to be eyed, marvelled at quite possibly and maybe applauded. The drawings advance his arguments. They display an open mind to the everyday, a sense of adventurous pursuit of what really matters.

There was always a twinkle to adorn the glare. No artist so imbued with warmth and zest could resist the challenge of what lay over the next hill.

Charles, Prince of Wales

Self-portrait 1961 This self-portrait (showing a mirror-image Kyffin – his parting was on the left – in his early forties) possibly dates from 1961. It seems to have featured in an exhibition entitled ‘Kyffin Williams: New Paintings’ at the Leicester Galleries run

by Ernest Brown & Phillips Ltd. on Leicester Square in October of that year, and was subsequently bought by Highgate School for £84. According to the National Library of Wales: “Kyffin’s self-portraits provide a glimpse into the various aspects of his character: the quizzical young man, the serious moustachioed artist with palette in hand and the eccentric portrayed in his humorous caricatures.”

INTRODUCTION Were there no other picture in this centenary show, Kyffin Williams’s self-portrait would alone merit an exhibition. It’s a wonderful work by an endlessly fascinating artist whose portraiture is as worthy of celebration – some insist even more worthy – than the landscapes for which he is best known. The part of the face in shadow seems to me symbolic of the impossibility of ever seeing exactly the person he was, always slightly enigmatically escaping one’s grasp. Seeing the painting for the first time at Highgate School certainly confirmed the title I was considering for the Lund Humphries book, Kyffin Williams: The Light and The Dark.

Kyffin’s true environment was the Welsh heartland he never really left, but in many ways it was Highgate – its polar opposite – that permitted him to become the artist he was and achieve what he did. Highgate School was not his alma mater in the usual definition of the phrase – that was Shrewsbury – but it certainly nurtured and stimulated him, giving the solid base that, for almost three decades, allowed him to pursue an artistic career in tandem with teaching. The sympathetic way he was treated was exemplary.

In 1944, on graduating from the Slade – evacuated to Oxford during the war years – it was Headmaster Geoffrey Bell who appointed him as Art Master. When, after two years, Kyffin’s increasing passion for painting risked impinging on his school duties, Bell’s foresight in suggesting a job-share offered the ideal solution. The School Governors

would also be understanding in the matter of occasional sabbaticals, but it’s clear that Kyffin’s dedicated and indeed enlightened approach was much appreciated. The fact that two of his pupils Anthony Green and Patrick Procktor followed in his footsteps to become members of the Royal Academy speaks for itself.

Architect Michael Davies remembers him as an inspiring teacher and also opportunistic: if morning mist were giving a rather special atmosphere, then the art lesson would be en plein air, with the Master encouraging his pupils to see and feel the difference it might make to the mood of a picture.

Waterlow Park and Hampstead Heath couldn’t be a substitute for Kyffin’s beloved North Wales, but they nevertheless represented an escape to the green of nature which was salutary. And pictures painted in the vicinity – such as that of West Hill, which normally graces the stairs of the library at the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution – are windows on this part of his life. Visually they underline a crucial factor in Kyffin’s art: the fundamental balance and structure of a composition, something he constantly underlined to his pupils.

Kyffin loved the fact that Highgate was a village, manageable and sociable, even pre-Café Rouge.

But working only part-time – and spending so much on paints and canvases – meant he was often impoverished and he admitted to playing cards occasionally to win money with which he could buy a good supper. The regular sporting element of school life was important to Kyffin and, in this context, the

Self-portrait Carrying Artist Materials c 1991 David Meredith, Chairman of the Sir Kyffin Williams Trust, once wrote: “(Kyffin) was a brilliant caricaturist. He painted for sixty years during his long life and he met a lot of ridiculous situations. He could immediately see the humorous side of things and would dash off a cartoon at a second’s notice. It wasn’t the done thing for artists like him but Kyffin did it anyway.” The small pen and ink drawings showing the artist’s more personal and humorous side and penchant for self mockery would often be sent as gifts or end up adorning letters and cards and are still treasured by his friends. Perhaps the best known examples are the cartoons that Kyffin produced to illustrate the rhymes about Welsh folk hero Crawshay Bailey which he had composed with his old comrade in arms Sandy Livingstone Learmonth, published as Boyo Ballads.

return of the portrait of England test-cricketer and School Coach, Albert Knight, to its place in Kyffin’s early artistic output is a quiet triumph.

Another significant portrait is that of his landlady, Mary Josling, whose house in 12 Bisham Gardens could

hardly have been more convenient lodgings. But, more than that, Miss Josling was a remarkable woman who at that stage in Kyffin’s life fulfilled something of a caring role, warm and easy by comparison with his mother who was rather buttoned-up –“cold” said some – and seemingly indifferent to her

son’s burgeoning success. When Essyllt Williams was staying at Bisham Gardens at the time of a show opening, Miss Josling, perhaps noticing the absence of obvious maternal affection or pride, somehow elicited the fact that the baby Kyffin had been sent to a wet-nurse at birth.

Mary Josling’s recounting of this to Kyffin took him by surprise: his father had once pointed out the place where he’d spent the first year of life, but he’d not made the connection.

It explained a great deal but, concerned not to hurt his mother’s feelings, Kyffin never quizzed her further. The psychologists and therapists of North London would surely have had a field day examining this lack of early bonding between mother and son, a big black emotional hole. That Kyffin inherited from his father a natural warmth and wholly genial and generous disposition helped counterbalance the more complex and melancholic distaff legacy. Yet it was, in part, the artist’s own vulnerabilities – to which may be added the fact of his epilepsy – which made him infinitely sensitive to the vulnerability of others. A deep compassion is always present in his portraiture and that he could apply his characteristic painting-knife technique to this genre as precisely as to the Snowdonia mountains is testimony to his fluency. In his conscious espousal of this style, Kyffin took courage from the fact that prejudice against using knives – still to a degree pertaining in Britain – had not hindered European painters such as van Gogh, Courbet, Soutine and de Staël.

It was my father, the late John Ormond, who made the first documentary about Kyffin, with footage of Mr Williams in the Highgate art room. The film marked the beginning of their close friendship – hence my own longstanding association with Kyffin – and it was Ormond who suggested he visit the Welsh community in Patagonia. Kyffin thought of this trip – from late 1968 to early 1969 – as the greatest adventure of his life. Again, full marks to the School for letting him go. Patagonia is home from home for the Welsh and, though Kyffin didn’t actually retire until 1973, it was his experience there that helped determine his permanent return to Wales. Having done dozens of drawings and watercolours, it was the striking series of Patagonian oils painted on his return that were apparently instrumental in his being nominated an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1970. By 1974, he became an RA, making his dream of being a full-time artist a reality.

Friendship, including that with teaching colleagues, would be important throughout Kyffin’s life, a sustaining element to compensate for an often solitary creative life, for, like so many epilepsy sufferers of earlier generations, marriage was effectively denied him, a lasting sadness. Always viewing Highgate with immense pride and recognising the part it played in his life, he would have been deeply touched by this centenary tribute, as both School and Institution honour an unassuming man who became one of the best-loved artists of his time.

Rian Evans Author, Kyffin Williams: The Light and The Dark, May 2018

Conservatory, Highgate (Athlone House) c 1945 Kyffin rarely used to title or date his works, so for many years this painting was known simply as ‘Highgate, Conservatory’ as attempts to identify the exact location had failed. However, when the National Library of Wales posted an image of the picture on the Art Detective website in 2014, the conservatory was spotted in late 19th century engravings of Caen Wood Towers on Hampstead Lane, which had been renamed Athlone House in 1972. Since the glasshouse was demolished in 1945 after the buildings had been used as an RAF Intelligence Training School during the war, this painting must have been amongst the first that Kyffin completed after graduating from the Slade and joining Highgate School in 1944.

LOCAL LANDSCAPES Highgate West Hill c 1951 This oil of a very recognisable West Hill (though the gas lamp is no longer there) on a winter’s afternoon, bathed in the amber light from a sun reminiscent of van Gogh, was listed in a catalogue of ‘Recent Paintings’ by Kyffin that were exhibited alongside works by James Dickson Innes at the Leicester Galleries in February 1952. A couple of years later it featured in a show entitled ‘Six Highgate Artists’ at the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution priced at 25 guineas. Also represented was Antony Kerr whom Kyffin had known at the Slade, resulting in an invitation to share the art teaching at Highgate School; and Margaret Thomas’s picture of the School in winter was priced at only 22 guineas. Both now hang in the Library of the HLSI.

Cader Idris c 1948 In his first volume of autobiography Across the Straits, Kyffin writes “It wasn’t until the summer of 1947 that I first painted pictures that gave me some belief in my abilities. I had found that, in expressing the vast bulk of the mountains, the palette knife was a great ally, and so I began to knead and model the paint. I painted Snowdon, Cnicht, the Moelwyns, Moel Hebog and Cader Idris, and began to draw incessantly.” This oil is based on a drawing that Kyffin completed in the spring of 1948 while staying at the Ty’n y Cornel Hotel on the shores of Tal-y-llyn Lake.

France, Burgundy Country 1952 Kyffin first crossed the Channel in 1950 after he had been forced by illness to take a year off from teaching at Highgate. He continued to travel abroad throughout the following decade, visiting Italy, France, Austria, Holland and Greece – as well as Scotland and Ireland. In 1952 he drove through southwestern France to Italy with a friend called Morys Cemlyn-Jones and his sister Gaynor. Their car was a Jowett Javelin with the registration FUN 845 (according to Obsessed: the biography of Kyffin Williams). This sketch might have been drawn on the return journey through northern France. In a 1998 interview he explained: “I like to draw with Indian ink often mixed with sepia to add warmth. I like the quality of very dark ink and I leave areas of the paper pure white because the whites create excitement.”

‘A W I D E R S K Y ’

Venice Kyffin visited Venice several times between 1950 and 2004 and this is a linocut of the Gesuati church in Dorsoduro seen across the Giudecca canal. Linoleum, a floor covering invented in the nineteenth century, can be cut away more easily than a wood-block and in any direction (as it has no grain) to produce a raised surface that accepts ink evenly. Kyffin was taught the technique in his days at the Slade in Oxford and employed it successfully for many years afterwards. In 2002 Cutting Images, a limited edition volume of more than 50 of his linocuts published by Gwasg Gregynog, spectacularly sold out three weeks after its launch.

Sunset over Dyffryn Camwy (Patagonia) c 1968 Kyffin travelled to Patagonia in Argentina in 1968-9 on a Churchill Fellowship to paint the Welsh community established there in 1865. He spent the first few months on the Atlantic side of the province of Chubut – Dyffryn Camwy is the Welsh name for the Rio Chubut’s lower valley. He worked with pen, ink, watercolour and gouache as well as taking hundreds of 35mm slide photographs. In Kyffin Williams: the Sea and the Sky he wrote: “I have never seen such beautiful sunsets as those that danced above the valley, forcing me to try to make some sense of them in watercolour. I failed many times but in this one I feel I may have come close to recording the excitement of it as the sun went down above the little village of Gaiman.”

Farmers Returning from Work - Euros Hughes 1968 Kyffin’s first port of call on his visit to Patagonia in 1968 was Trelew. He was not impressed, describing it in A Wider Sky as “… an unimaginative town … there is dust and in the streets waste paper in abundance.” Kyffin’s “eager and energetic” guide, Glyn Ceiriog Hughes, drove him out to a more rural setting (Dyffryn Camwy) to see his brother Euros. According to Luned Roberts de González, Euros was “a tidy farmer who was fond of … the shade of the poplar trees” during the hot, dry summers. On his return to the UK from his trip to Argentina in 1969, Kyffin turned some of his drawings into oils but after painting about 48 he realised that the 49th was in fact a Welsh painting and not Patagonian so he stopped. This particular picture was developed into an oil entitled ‘Euros Hughes Irrigating his Fields, Patagonia’ that is also in the collection of the National Library of Wales.

PEO P L E I N L ANDSCAPE S

Farmer amongst the Rocks In Kyffin’s obituary published in The Independent, Welsh poet and editor Meic Stephens wrote: “The typical Kyffin picture shows a peak under dark cloud, a lowering sky and perhaps a shepherd, with hazel stick and dog, making his way down a rocky slope … The predominant colours are olive-green, slate-grey, ochre and umber, the paint applied lusciously with a palette knife in thick, bold swathes of pigment in which it is possible to take pleasure for its own sake.” PhD student and artist Douglas Iwan Dafis found by looking at exhibition catalogues that Kyffin increased his depiction of farmers over time, with only four listed in the 1940s but eighty-one in the 1990s – though ultimately people and animals could find no place in his paintings as they became more abstract.

Miss Josling c 1950 In the mid-1940s Kyffin took lodgings at 12 Bisham Gardens, Highgate.

The house was run by Miss Mary Josling from Castle Hedingham in Essex who was “a person of incredible goodness and gifted with power to help people in trouble” according to Across the Straits. She attracted the weak and the suffering and “everything in the house from humans and animals to the wiring system and plumbing was neurotic.” But Kyffin had a top floor room on the “liver-coloured street running east-west” from which he “could look over Waterlow Park to the dome of St Paul’s.” Miss Josling had been almost eighty when he moved in and her health declined rapidly after he left a decade later. He attended her funeral in Essex.

Norma Lopez c 1969 Half way through his stay in Welsh Patagonia in 1968/9, Kyffin took a bus to the communities living in the far west of the province of Chubut in the Andean foothills. In the village of Trevelin he stayed in the home of Senora Gwenonwy Berwyn de Jones.

She had an Indian family living with her – a mother, daughter and son all of whom could speak Welsh. Norma was about eight years old and used to tease Kyffin at meal times, suggesting that his moustache resembled a scorpion. He drew her portrait several times.

Milein Cosman 1961 Milein Cosman, who died in 2017 at the age of 96, had, like Kyffin, studied at the Slade in Oxford during the war after arriving in Britain from Germany in 1939.

Kyffin described her as “a small and vital girl, happily imbued with a culture that stemmed from the great artistic centres of Europe. She was an exciting draughtsman and a lively student.” After moving to London she married the distinguished musicologist Hans Keller and they set up home in Hampstead in the 1960s. She was an illustrator and freelance artist, quickly capturing many musicians at rehearsals in particular.

She had kept in touch with Kyffin while he was working at Highgate and kept on referring to him as “an exceptionally wonderful human being” in an interview recorded shortly before her death.

PORTRAITS

LIST OF WORKS HIGHGATE GALLERY Pictures 1 to 47 loaned by The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. Pictures 48 to 58 loaned by private collectors.

Title

Date

Medium and Size

1

Hampstead Heath

c 1945

Oil on straw board | 422 x 572mm

2

Kufstein, Austria

3

Cartoon Self-portrait

4

Sunset over Dyffryn Camwy (Patagonia)

c 1968

Watercolour on paper | 422 x 572mm

5

Capel Bryn Crwn

c 1969

Ink & wash | 422 x 572mm

6

Cwm Hyfryd

c 1969

Watercolour on paper | 562 x 687mm

7

Norma Lopez

c 1969

Ink & wash | 420 x 312mm

8

Henry Morris, Llanedwen

c 1979

Pen & ink | 615 x 538mm

9

Castell Harlech

c 1996

Ink & wash | 775 x 875mm

10

Farmer with Three Dogs in a Field

Pencil & watercolour on paper | 562 x 687mm

11

Farmer with Shepherd’s Crook and Dog

Pencil & watercolour on paper | 562 x 687mm

12

Pentre Pella

Pencil & watercolour on paper | 562 x 687mm

13

Farmer with a Gun and Dog

14

Farmers Returning from Work (Euros Hughes)

15

Self-portrait, Head

16

Self-portrait, Head & Shoulders

c 1950

Ink with watercolour & ink wash | 420 x 312mm

17

Self-portrait Looking Down

c 1950

Ink & wash, black & white | 420 x 312mm

18

Self-portrait

c 1950

Crayon, black & white | 420 x 312mm

19

Self-portrait

1960-1980

Linocut | 572 x 422mm

20

Self-portrait

1990-2006

Pencil with watercolour | 630 x 566mm

21

Self-portrait

1970-1980

Pencil, black & white | 572 x 422mm

22

Crawshay Bailey’s Cousin Kyffin (pictures in background)

c 1985

Pencil & wash | 572 x 422mm

23

Crawshay Bailey’s Cousin Kyffin (plain background)

c 1985

Pencil & wash | 572 x 422mm

24

Self-portrait Carrying Artist Materials

c 1991

Drawing, marker work | 420 x 312mm

25

Self-portrait, Painting in Ireland

c 1991

Drawing, marker work | 420 x 312mm

26

Self-portrait, in Ireland

c 1991

Drawing, marker work | 420 x 312mm

27

Female Nude Sitting

1940-50

Pencil, ink & wash | 572 x 422mm

28

Cypress Trees beneath Blue Cloudy Sky

Gouache & pencil | 420 x 312mm

29

Sunflowers with Mountains Beyond

Oil on board | 687 x 562mm

30

Sunset Study

Pencil | 422 x 572mm

31

Farmer at Funeral

32

Border Collie

c 1985

Pencil with watercolour | 481 x 595mm

33

Farmer with Stick

c 2005

Pencil & watercolour | 668 x 560mm

34

Pwllfanogl

c 1991

Ink on paper | 420 x 312mm

35

Gwastadnant

Linoprint | 667 x 647mm

36

Waves and Surf

Pencil & watercolour wash on paper | 422 x 572mm

37

Breaking Waves

Pencil & watercolour | 422 x 572mm

38

Venice

Linoprint | 440 x 470mm

39

Paris with Notre Dame in the Distance

40

Dr Kate Roberts

1983

Pencil | 861 x 970mm

41

Evan Roberts OBE

c 1990

Pencil & watercolour | 805 x 678mm

42

Hugh Rowlands

43

Ceri Ellis Drinking Mate

44

Fred Uhlman

1960

Oil on canvas | 725 x 625mm

45

Conservatory, Highgate (Athlone House)

c 1945

Oil on canvas | 740 x 635mm

46

Farmer amongst the Rocks

47

Gardener at Work, St Joseph’s Highgate

48

Highgate West Hill

c 1951

Oil on canvas | 450 x 550mm

49

The Eagle

2005

Pencil & watercolour | 370 x 410mm

HLSI (bequeathed by Mr Harry Atkins) Stephen Benson

50

Mountains and River by Kathleen Budgett-Meakin

Oil on canvas | 440 x 340mm

Catherine Budgett-Meakin

51

Tramp Holding Dog

Marker pen on paper | 300 x 200mm

Adam Edwards

52

Farm Building, Anglesey (litho print of original)

Litho print | 635 x 680mm

Averil Burgess

53

Game Cock

Pencil & watercolour | 510 x 535mm

Private collection

54

Three Wild Ponies

Pencil & watercolour | 445 x 550mm

Private collection

55

Cliffs at Holyhead near South Stack

Gouache on paper | 710 x 530mm

Private collection

56

Farmer in the Rain with Dog

Pencil & watercolour | 455 x 565mm

Private collection

57

Farmer in the Snow

Pencil & watercolour | 605 x 480mm

Private collection

58

Holy Trinity Church, Paddington

Watercolour on paper | 312 x 420mm Pencil on paper | 422 x 572mm

Pencil & watercolour on paper | 420 x 312mm 1968

Ink & wash on paper | 420 x 312mm Ink & wash, black & white | 572 x 422mm

Off-set litho print | 784 x 546mm

Pencil with watercolour | 562 x 687mm

Pencil | 354 x 316mm Pencil & watercolour wash | 572 x 422mm

Oil on canvas | 775 x 1082mm c 1945

c 1965 1993

Oil on hardboard | 687 x 562mm

pre-1971 Oil on canvas | 900 x 710mm

Private collection

LIST OF WORKS HIGHGATE SCHOOL MUSEUM Exhibited at Highgate School Museum: all works are by Kyffin Williams unless stated otherwise.

Title

Date

Medium and Size

Loaned by

1

Self-portrait

1961

Oil on canvas | 860 x 750mm

Highgate School

2

Mari Prichard

1956

Oil on canvas | 750 x 650mm

Highgate School

3

North London Snow Scene

c 1950

Oil on canvas | 670 x 780mm

Highgate School

4

Cader Idris

c 1948

Oil on canvas | 940 x 1170mm

Highgate School

5

Tanygrisiau

c 1953

Oil on canvas | 840 x 1100mm

Highgate School

6

Storm over the Moelwyns (on reverse of 5)

c 1953

Oil on canvas | 840 x 1100mm

Highgate School

7

Albert Knight

1945

Oil on linen | 650 x 540mm

Highgate School

8

Kyffin by David Porteous-Butler

2003

Lithograph | 510 x 420mm

Highgate School

9

Drws y Coed

pre-1999

Ink & wash | 430 x 530mm

Highgate School

10

Kyffin at Llanberis by David Carpanini

1991

Soft ground etching | 520 x 420mm

Highgate School

11

Liverpool Pilot Boat off Moelfre

1950s

Oil on canvas | 720 x 930mm

David Smith

12

Football Match

c 1950

Oil on board | 350 x 510mm

David Smith

13

Standing Stones

c 1952

Crayon & colour wash | 610 x 780mm

David Smith

14

France, Burgundy Country

1952

Ink & wash | 550 x 440mm

David Smith

15

Kyffin by David Carpanini

c 1987

Pencil | 830 x 1110mm

David Smith

16

Hills near Rome

1952

Ink & wash | 560 x 760mm

Private collection

17

Self-portrait

c 1958

Ink | 180 x 150mm

Private collection

18

Sergeant Abrahams

c 1952

Oil on canvas | 540 x 420mm

Edmund M B King

19

Kyffin in the Orkney Chair by Ishbel McWhirter

c 2003

Oil on canvas | 990 x 790mm

Ishbel McWhirter RCA

20

Jo

1963

Oil on canvas | 750 x 640mm

21

Kyffin Williams by Milein Cosman

c 1960

Ink & wash | 280 x 270mm unframed

22

Delphiniums

c 1960

Oil on canvas | 1020 x 560mm unframed

Jo Cross The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust Mrs JP Haynes

23

Cottage at Cesarea

c 1980

Ink & wash | 460 x 530mm

24

Waves at Trearddur

c 1995

Watercolour | 580 x 940mm

25

Milein Cosman

1961

Oil on canvas | 900 x 750mm

26

Autumn at Brynsiencyn

1985

Oil on canvas | 760 x 910mm

27

Shepherd and Dog

2007

Oil on canvas | 810 x 810mm

Collection of Pauline and Ray Treen Private collection

28

Road above Harlech

c 1985

Oil on canvas | 660 x 760mm

Trevor Newland

29

Venice

1979

Oil on canvas | 500 x 700mm

Private collection

30

Penrhyn Du

c 1974

Oil on canvas | 760 x 1060mm

Gwenda Phillips

31

Jamie

c 1975

Pencil | 500 x 430mm

Mrs MJ Kelsey-Fry

32

Miss Josling

c 1950

Oil on board | 470 x 400mm

Oriel Môn, Anglesey

33

Liverpool Pilot Boat off Moelfre

1950s

Pencil | 420 x 570mm

Oriel Môn, Anglesey

34

Dyffryn Camwy

c 1973

Oriel Môn, Anglesey

35

Cader Idris

1948

36

Highgate Schoolboy

1953

Watercolour | 420 x 570mm Reproduction of a pencil and watercolour drawing | 180 x 250mm unframed Reproduction of an oil on canvas painting 990 x 580mm

37 38

Cuckoo by Geoffrey Dashwood – owned by Kyffin Williams Bittern by Adrian Sorrell – owned by Kyffin Williams

2000

Bronze sculpture

c 1982

Bronze sculpture Archival pigment print on paper 610 x 510mm unframed Archival pigment print on paper 610 x 510mm unframed Archival pigment print on paper 610 x 510mm unframed Reproduction of a photograph by Guglielmo Galvin | 160 x 230mm

39

Kyffin Williams Drawing on the Anglesey Coast

1993

40

Kyffin Williams at Pwllfanogl

1987

41

Kyffin Williams at Pwllfanogl

2005

42

Kyffin Williams at Pwllfanogl

1988

43

Monuments in Highgate Cemetery by Michael Delaney

c 1959

Ink & wash | 420 x 570mm

44

Grey Man Sitting at Table by Sven Gahlin

c 1950

Watercolour | 420 x 570mm

45

Flowers by Anthony Fry

c 1958

Watercolour | 570 x 420mm

Martin Richards Collection of Mike and Elisabeth Davies The Bowerman Charitable Trust

Albany Gallery, Cardiff Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth Nicholas Sinclair Nicholas Sinclair Nicholas Sinclair The Observer Magazine National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth

Highgate Gallery has made every attempt to ensure that the information in this brochure was correct at the time of printing.

However, loans and contributions have continued to be forthcoming, and research is ongoing, so there may be some discrepancies.

KYFFIN WILLIAMS CHRONOLOGY 1918 May 9 - John Kyffin Williams born in Llangefni, Anglesey.

1969 – 1976 and 1992 – 2006 President of the Royal Cambrian Academy, Conwy.

Educated at Trearddur House School, Anglesey and Shrewsbury School.

1969 Began to exhibit Patagonia work, including a show at the Leicester Galleries in 1970.

1937 Joined 6th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers (T.A.) as a Lieutenant. Had first epilepsy seizure the same year.

1970 Elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.

1941 Failed army medical because of epilepsy and was discharged. Doctor advised him to take up art for the sake of his health.

1973 Retired from teaching at Highgate School and returned to Anglesey to live and paint.

Rented a house on the banks of the Menai Strait at Pwllfanogl from the Marquess and Marchioness of Anglesey.

1941 – 1944 Studied at Slade School of Fine Art (relocated to Ruskin College in Oxford due to war), awarded the Slade Portrait Prize and the Robert Ross Leaving Scholarship.

1973 Autobiography Across the Straits was published.

1974 Became a Royal Academician.

1944 - 1973 Worked at Highgate School as Senior Art Master. Lived in several addresses in Highgate including Bisham Gardens 1946 – 1956. His pupils included the historian Sir Martin Gilbert, the actor Robin Ellis, Royal Academicians Anthony Green and Patrick Procktor and composers John Tavener and John Rutter.

1983 Received an OBE for his contribution to the Arts.

1989 Awarded an Honorary Fellowship of University College Swansea.

1991 Awarded an Honorary Fellowship of University College of North Wales, Bangor.

Returned frequently to North Wales during these years to paint landscapes and portraits.

1991 Autobiography A Wider Sky was published.

1948 First solo exhibition ‘Welsh Landscape Painting’ at Colnaghi Gallery in London.

1992 Awarded an Honorary Fellowship of University College of Wales, Aberystwyth.

1950s and 1960s Made frequent painting trips to Europe during the school holidays.

1999 Knighted. 80th birthday exhibition at National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.

1966 Moved to Bolton Studios, Chelsea. Subject of BBC film Horizons Hung in Air: Kyffin Williams.

2001 Appeared on BBC Radio 4 on Desert Island Discs.

1968 Awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to study and paint the Welsh Community in Patagonia, Argentina.

2006 September 1 Kyffin Williams died aged 88 at Llanfairpwll, and was buried at Llanfair-yngNghornwy on the north coast of Anglesey.

THANKS Highgate Gallery would like to thank David Smith and Highgate School; Rian Evans; Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru/The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; Oriel MĂ´n, Anglesey; Savills; Gwasg Gregynog; Clarence House; Lund Humphries; BBC Cymru Wales; ITV Wales; the HLSI Management Committee and all those who have loaned work, made donations and generously given their time.

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Hampstead Heath c 1945 In his early years at Highgate Kyffin was occasionally guilty of missing lessons. In a British Library interview he recalled a conversation with Headmaster Geoffrey Bell. “He said, `Oh Williams, you didn’t turn up yesterday, did you?’ And I said, `Well no I didn’t actually, I went out painting.’ `Well Williams it’s rather difficult, do you see, if you don’t turn up; there’s nobody to teach the boys. I think it would be better if you turned up.’ He was very nice about it, very civilised.”

This was perhaps one of those pictures, painted quickly and sparingly with patches of straw board showing through.