Corcoran College of Art and Design
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Shadows of History
On View
Shadows of History: Photographs of the Civil War
February 4–May 6, 2012
Holly Bass
Moneymaker
An Endurance Performance by Holly Bass
Saturday, February 11, 2012
10 a.m.–5 p.m.

Bookmark and ShareTurner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales

About the Davies Sisters


Turner to Cézanne: Masterpieces from the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales features more than 50 masterpieces from the extraordinary collection of Margaret (1884–1963) and Gwendoline (1882–1951) Davies, Welsh sisters who were among the most progressive British collectors of the early 20th century. Famously reclusive, the sisters devoted much energy into forming a collection they later bequeathed to the National Museum Wales, establishing the nucleus of the institution’s 19th- and 20th-century European holdings. Though the Davies sisters remained relatively isolated from artistic circles of the day, their intention in collecting was to enhance and influence cultural life in Wales and beyond. As such, the sisters were highly important—and fascinatingly unusual—trailblazers during a most crucial period in the development of art.

Gwendoline and Margaret Davies existed largely outside the bohemian circles of the artists whose works to which they were drawn. They acquired the majority of the works in their collection between 1908 and 1925, focusing primarily on French art—landscapes and images of women and children.

Shy and ill-at-ease in society, the sisters preferred to spend their days at their Victorian country house, Gregynog Hall. Eventually, they made their home a hub for what scholar Oliver Fairclough, in his essay in the exhibition’s catalogue, calls a “craft colony.” There, the sisters established Gregynog Press, hosted politicians and educators, and founded the Gregynog Festival, an annual music festival still in existence today.

In Britain, Gwendoline and Margaret Davies were among a very small group of collectors with serious interest in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists including Renoir, Monet, van Gogh, and Cézanne. As women who challenged the convention of the traditional British collector, the work they acquired chronicled the increasingly modern world in which they lived.

Images: Gwendoline Davies. Copyright Lord Davies
Margaret Davies. Copyright Lord Davies