Cardiff and Wales

Cardiff is the place in Wales most visitors see, so it makes sense for Cardiff to try to display some Welshness. That’s not so simple.

At the National Museum of Wales (the main Cardiff art gallery), you are confronted by a vast white-stone building, one of a suite, that looks like (and largely is) municipal offices. In France, they were building vast, exaggerated art galleries 20 years before this, and the Cardiff building is equally tasteless. Worse, it’s not even Welsh.

What makes a Welsh building, you may ask? I’m not sure I can answer that, but I can state confidently that this building is not Welsh. It looks like an attempt to impose an official culture on a principality, to be honest.

Once inside, the collection is stunning, largely because the two Davies sisters, who spent much of their grandfather’s wealth buying an astonishing collection of art, much of it French, at a time when these painters were not as established as they are today. The Davies sisters clearly had taste; few of the pictures on display were embarrassing, and some of them are simply breathtaking, including two marvellous works by Cezanne.  The sisters clearly had some kind of social conscience, because they also bought Millet and Daumier (including his wonderful Head of a Man and Lunch in the Country).  

Daumier, Lunch in the Country

Now, the Davies sisters didn’t only (or even mainly) buy Welsh art, for whatever reason, but their acquisitions were inspired. The museum bookshop had a book about them, and their lives were fascinating. I admit I was a little disappointed to learn that their art-buying ended shortly after the First World War, but perhaps the experience of the horror of war changed their perspective. Yet, after that time, the sisters spent their money not on art but on music festivals and on a private press (as well as, to be fair, supporting many large-scale educational initiatives, such as  supporting the National Library of Wales). But in the arts, however noble the music and private press initiatives, they will have had much less impact on Wales than the paintings.

Returning to the National Museum of Wales, perhaps the first problem is to persuade anyone, from Wales or from anywhere else, to enter this vast white mausoleum. The building suffers, like so many large art galleries, from being so monumental that as a result it is totally forbidding to enter. I once shared a flat with an architecture student who pointed out to me how some benches in public spaces are inviting for people to sit on, while others are not. In the same way, that white building is not very inviting for visitors. There is a cafe in the entrance hall, but you don't just stroll in (unless you already know it is there). 

 

William Dyce, Welsh landscape with two women knitting, 1860

Once inside, the visitor discovers that the Museum has an excellent Welsh landscape gallery, with works arranged by location – a very good idea. There are some very friendly staff in the galleries, who are happy to chat. The collection dutifully includes some of the most dreadful Victorian images of Wales, by two of the usual culprits, William Dyce and W P Frith; the Dyce work is particularly offensive, featuring two Welsh women in traditional dress, knitting, in a mountainous landscape. It’s the sort of work that most provincial galleries would keep in their store, and yet this picture was bought as recently as 2010. If there is to be an attempt at a populist art for Wales, the statue of Nye Bevan in the main shopping street is far more successful. If nothing else, it is positioned where the people are, rather than hiding its face in a sepulchral art gallery.

Vera Bassett, Welsh Hills

So what does Cardiff need? Perhaps to shout a bit more about its excellent Welsh artists, such as Vera Bassett. Perhaps some new distinctive Welsh buildings. Every city has dreary buildings, but Cardiff seemed not to have any breathtaking iconic building - except perhaps for the rugby stadium. If you look up Cardiff in the Michelin tourist guide, the recommended things to see – Cardiff Castle, Castell Coch – are monuments to fabulous wealth, but hardly very characteristically Welsh. Perhaps the truly Welsh buildings would pay homage to the magnificent scenery around them, rather than (like the National Museum of Wales) doing everything possible to ignore their surroundings and to keep visitors out.