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Authority record

John, Gwen, 1876-1939

  • n 77003130
  • Person

Gwendolen Mary (Gwen) John (1876-1939), painter, was born in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire. She was the sister of fellow artist Augustus John (1878-1961). Between 1895 and 1898 she was a pupil at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, alongside her brother. During her time there she befriended other female artists including Ursula Tyrwhitt and Ida Nettleship, who later married Augustus. She studied at the Academie Carmen in Paris in 1898 and settled permanently in Paris from 1904. In the same year she met, and began a stormy relationship with, the sculptor Auguste Rodin. She was introduced by Augustus to the American lawyer and collector John Quinn and his companion Jeanne Robert Foster. Amongst her circle of friends was the revolutionary, feminist and actress Maud Gonne and Dorelia McNeill, who became Augustus's lifelong companion. In her later years she formed an attachment to the Russian-Jewish émigré Véra Oumançoff, who lived near her in the Paris suburb of Meudon. The majority of her paintings were of women or girls and, from 1913 when she was received into the Catholic church, ecclesiastically-themed works. She was exhibited in Paris, London and New York. It is believed that she ceased to produce any works of art after about 1933. Gwen John died in Dieppe, France, in 1939.
Her nephew Edwin John (1905-1978), son of Augustus, was the chief executor of her will. Following John's death her artistic reputation was revived by numerous exhibitions both in Britain and the United States, beginning with the memorial exhibition at the Matthiesen Gallery, London, in 1946.

Lewis, Gwyneth, 1959-

  • n 77015945
  • Person
  • 1959-

Gwyneth Lewis is a poet and writer who was born in Cardiff in 1959. She writes in both Welsh and English. Brought up in a Welsh-speaking family, she was educated at Ysgol Gyfun Rhydfelen, Pontypridd, and studied English at Girton College, Cambridge, before spending three years in the USA studying creative writing as a Harkness Fellow at Harvard and Columbia universities, and then as a freelance writer in New York. She has also held temporary fellowships at the universities of Harvard (2008), Stanford (2009), Cambridge (2010), Manchester (2012) and Swansea (2012), and has a D.Phil. in English from Balliol College, Oxford.

Gwyneth Lewis's first collection of poems in Welsh appeared in 1977, and her first collection of poems in English was published as Parables and Faxes in 1995, since when her poetry in both languages has been published widely. Much of her work is concerned with the relationship between language, the self and its environment, and she often engages with scientific subjects as well as the arts. Her poems in English sometimes employ the techniques of Welsh-language composition, and her style is often direct, which she describes as 'telling things as they are'. Gwyneth Lewis has won many awards for her poetry in both languages, including the Crown at the 2012 National Eisteddfod, and she composed the inscription above the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff in 2004. She has been the Welsh language editor of Poetry Wales, and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Welsh Academy. In 2005, she was made the first National Poet of Wales.

Gwyneth Lewis’s prose writing can be very personal. She addressed her problems with depression and alcoholism in Sunbathing in the Rain, while Two in a Boat is an account of sailing a yacht with her husband, Leighton Denver Davies (a former bosun in the Merchant Navy) across the Atlantic to Africa.

As well as her creative literary work, Gwyneth Lewis has been employed as a book reviewer in New York, as a correspondent for Radio Wales in the USA and the Far East, and as a documentary producer and director for BBC Wales. In 2001, she was awarded a grant by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) to carry out research and sail to ports historically linked to Cardiff and its inhabitants. She has also been commissioned by the Welsh National Opera to compose musical librettos for performances by schools and amateur singers.

Edmund-Davies, Herbert Edmund, Baron, 1906-

  • n 78010357
  • Person
  • 1906-1992

Herbert Edmund Davies (he later assumed the surname of Edmund-Davies) was born on 15 July 1906 at Mountain Ash, Mid Glamorgan. He was the third son of Morgan John Davies and Elizabeth Maud Edmunds. He married Sarah Eurwen Williams-James (d. 1991) in 1935. He was educated at Mountain Ash Grammar School, King's College, London and Exeter College, Oxford, where he won the Vinerian scholarship. He was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn, 1929. He became a lecturer and examiner at the London School of Economics, 1930-1931. He joined the Army Officers' Emergency Reserve, 1938, and was commissioned into the Royal Welch Fusiliers, 1940. He was seconded to the Judge Advocate-General Department and became Assistant Judge Advocate-General, 1944-1945 (Lt-Col 1944). He took Silk in 1943 and served as Recorder of Merthyr Tydfil, 1942-1944; Swansea, 1944-1953; and Cardiff, 1953-1958. He became Chairman of Denbighshire Quarter Sessions, 1953-1964; Judge of High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, 1958-1966; a Lord Justice of Appeal, 1966-1974; a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, 1974-1981 and Foreign Office Observer, at the Cairo espionage trials, 1957. He was Chairman of the Transport Users' Consultative Committee for Wales, 1959-1961; Tribunal of Inquiry into Aberfan Disaster, 1966; Council of Law Reporting 1967-1972; Home Secretary's Criminal Law Revision Committee, 1969-1977; Home Secretary's Police Inquiry Committee, 1977-1979 and Use of Welsh in Courts Inquiry, 1973. He was President of London Welsh Trust/London Welsh Association, 1982-1992; University College of Swansea, 1965-1975; Hon. Standing Counsel, University of Wales, 1947-1957; and Pro-Chancellor, University of Wales, 1974-1985. In 1958, he was knighted on becoming a High Court Judge of the Queen's Bench Division. He was created a life peer as Baron Edmund-Davies of Aberpennar, Mid Glamorgan in 1974. He died 26 December 1992.

Gee, Thomas, 1815-1898

  • n 78068438
  • Person

Thomas Gee (1815-1898) was a Calvinistic Methodist minister, journalist, and politician, and editor of the weekly paper Baner ac Amserau Cymru.

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