JAMES DICKSON INNES (1887-1914)
Arenig Fawr (854m - 2, 892ft)
United Kingdom (Wales)
1. In Arenig Fawr, North Wales, 1911, oil on canvas, The Fitzwilliam Museum.
2. In Arenig, 1911-1912, oil on canvas, National Museum Wales, National Museum Cardiff
3. In Arenig North Wales, 1913 oil on canvas, TATE
4. In Arenig Mountain, 1911, watercolor, Arts Council Collection UK
The mountain
Arenig Fawr (854m - 2, 892ft) which means Great High Ground is a mountain in Snowdonia, North Wales, located close to Llyn Celyn reservoir alongside the A4212 between Trawsfynydd and Bala. Arenig Fawr is the highest member of the Arenig range with Arenig Fach (Small High Ground), a smaller neighbouring mountain, lying to the north. It is surrounded by Moel Llyfnant to the west, Rhobell Fawr to the south and Mynydd Nodol to the east.
The summit, which is also known as Moel yr Eglwys (Bare hill of the church), has a trig point and a memorial to eight American aircrew who died when their Flying Fortress bomber B-17F #42-3124 crashed on 4 August 1943. Some of the crash wreckage is still scattered across the hillside 300 m (330 yds) from the memorial location. From the summit, with good weather conditions, it is possible to see several notable Welsh mountain ranges: the Rhinogs in the west, Mount Snowdon to the northwest, Clwydian Hills in the northeast, east to the Berwyns, south east to the Arans, and southward to Cadair Idris. It is one of the finest panoramas in Wales.
Artists James Dickson Innes (above) and Augustus John used the mountain as a backdrop during their two years of painting in the Arenig valley between 1911-12. In 2011 their work was the subject of a BBC documentary entitled The Mountain That Had to Be Painted.
In The Faerie Queene, an incomplete English epic poem, by Sir Edmund Spenser, the home of 'old Timon', Prince Arthur’s sage foster-father "is low in a valley greene, Under the foot of Rauran mossy hore". Renowned Welsh historian Sir John Edward Lloyd wrote that Rauran "comes from Saxton's map of Merionethshire (1578), which places ‘Rarau uaure Hill’ (Yr Aran Fawr) where Arenig should be". A boulder at a crossroads in the hamlet of Bell Heath, near to Belbroughton, Worcestershire, in England, has a brass plaque attached to it stating "Boulder from Arenig Mountain in N. Wales, Brought here by the Welsh Ice-sheet in the Glacial Period".
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The painter
James Dickson Innes was a British painter, mainly of mountain landscapes but occasionally of figure subjects. He worked in both oils and watercolours. Of his style, art historian David Fraser Jenkins wrote: "Like that of the fauves in France and the expressionists in Germany, the style of his work is primitive: it is child-like in technique and is associated with the landscape of remote places."
It has been argued his unusual style led the way for British artists such as David Hockney.
He studied at the Carmarthen School of Art (1904–05), from where he won a scholarship to the Slade School of Art in London (1905–08). His teachers at the Slade included P. Wilson Steer.From 1907 he exhibited with the New English Art Club; and in 1911 he became a member of the Camden Town Group. The Camden Town Group included Walter Sickert who was an influence on Innes's art, and Augustus John with whom Innes became friends.
In 1911 he had a two-man exhibition with Eric Gill at the Chenil Gallery, London: "Sculptures by Mr Eric Gill and Landscapes by Mr J. D. Innes".
The Welsh politician and philanthropist Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874–1956) was an important patron of his work. In 1913 Innes exhibited in the influential Armory Show in New York City, Chicago and Boston.[3]
In 1911 and 1912 he spent some time painting with Augustus John around Arenig Fawr in the Arenig valley in North Wales(see above); but much of his work was done overseas, mainly in France (1908–1913), notably at Collioure, but also in Spain (1913) and Morocco (1913) – foreign travel having been prescribed after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Eventually, on 22 August 1914, at the age of twenty-seven, he died of the disease at a nursing home in Swanley, Kent.
In 2014 an exhibition of Innes' works was staged at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.
Source:
- National Museum Cardiff
