Gwendoline (1882–1951) and Margaret Davies (1884–1963) were among the very first collectors of impressionism in Britain. Having started buying pictures in 1908, by 1914 they had amassed Britain’s most impressive and progressive collection of modern French painting, including works by Manet, Rodin and several exceptional late works by Monet. In the 1920s, they purchased works by Cezanne, Van Gogh, Vlaminck, and Signac. The Davies sisters collected as contemporaries of Oskar Reinhart (1885-1965) and at the forefront of British taste; even Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947) followed in their wake, coming to collect impressionism after encountering their Cezannes.
In this talk, Samuel Raybone will put the Davies sisters in context and conversation with Oskar Reinhart. The remarkable similarities in their collecting suggests shared contexts, overlapping networks, and transnational structures of knowledge which mediated their engagement with impressionism. Yet, for all the interconnectivity of the European art market, all three collected with the aim of bringing impressionism to a specific place, to benefit particular publics. Focusing on the specificities of early twentieth century Wales, Raybone reframes the Davies sisters’ collecting in light of the Welsh practices and discourses of impressionism which pre-existed and exceeded them. The Davies sisters’ impressionist landscapes – paid for with inherited wealth derived from the extraction and transportation of coal in service of the British Empire – were received as catalysts of Welsh national revival, and became imbricated in a complex knot of imperial enthusiasm, racial identities, and medieval fantasy.
Dr Samuel Raybone is Lecturer in Art History at Aberystwyth University. He has published widely on the Impressionist artist & collector Gustave Caillebotte. His current research examines the imperial and racial coordinates of impressionism’s transnational mobility in the early twentieth century, focusing on the collection, display, and reception of impressionism in Wales. A second project, Ephemeral Impressions, examines the impact of colour-printed ephemera on the development of Impressionist aesthetics.
Find out more about the exhibition Goya to Impressionism. Masterpieces from the Oskar Reinhart Collection at: https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/exh-goya-to-impressionism-masterpieces-from-the-oskar-reinhart-collection.
Organised by Dr Ketty Gottardo, Martin Halusa Senior Curator of Drawings, The Courtauld.
Highlights from the exhibition:
