Thomas Nathaniel Davies

Nathaniel Davies was a prominent Welsh artist of the Modern British period. He studied at the Cardiff School of Art, where he was taught and befriended by the highly regarded painter and printmaker, Ceri Richards. After the war he embarked on a successful teaching career, including a post at the Royal College of Art.

Nathaniel Davies’ work is characterised by experimentation and an attunement to artistic develops of the day. Portraiture was a strong initial concern in the 1940s and 50s, with close observation of French Modernists including Modigliani detectable, as well as the influence of British forebears of the previous generation such as Christopher Wood. Ceri Richards style also cast a long shadow; shown in Davies’ strong sense of line and slightly surrealistic representations of form. By the end of the 1970s, Davies would fully embrace abstraction and hard-edges, leaving all sense of the painterly and organic behind.

Davies is represented in the collections of the V&A; Ruth Borchard Collection and The National Museum of Wales.