Editing David Jones (painter) (section)

==Biography==
===Early life===
Jones was born at Arabin Road, [[Brockley]], Kent, now a suburb of South East London, and later lived in nearby Howson Road. His father, James Jones, was born in [[Flintshire]] in north Wales, to a Welsh-speaking family, but he was discouraged from speaking Welsh by his father, who believed that habitual use of the language might hold his child back in a career. James Jones moved to London to work as a printer's overseer for the ''Christian Herald'' Press. He met and married Alice Bradshaw, a Londoner, and they had three children: Harold, who died at 21 of [[tuberculosis]], Alice and David.

Jones exhibited artistic promise at an early age, even entering drawings for exhibitions of children's artwork. He wrote that he knew from the age of six he would devote his life to art. He did not read fluently until the age of eight. From the very earliest years of his life he had already come to identify intensely with his paternal heritage: as an old man in 1971, he would write to [[Saunders Lewis]] of a 'passionate conviction that I belonged to my father's nation that I certainly felt by the time I was seven'.<ref>{{Cite journal  | title=David Jones Special Issue | journal=Agenda | volume=11:4 | date=1973 | page=90}}</ref> In 1909, at 14, he entered [[Camberwell College of Arts|Camberwell Art School]], where he studied under [[Archibald Standish Hartrick|A. S. Hartrick]], who had worked with [[Van Gogh]] and [[Gauguin]] and introduced him to the work of the [[Impressionist]]s and [[Pre-Raphaelite]]s. In addition, Jones studied literature, the subject of a mandatory one-hour weekly class at Camberwell.<ref name="Engraver"/>

===World War I===
With the outbreak of the First World War, Jones enlisted in the London Welsh Battalion of the [[Royal Welch Fusiliers]] on 2 January 1915 and served on the [[Western Front (World War I)|Western Front]] in 1915–1918 with the [[38th (Welsh) Infantry Division|38th (Welsh) Division]].<ref name="Dilworth">{{Cite book |author=Thomas Dilworth |publisher=Enitharmon |year=2012 |title=David Jones in the Great War |isbn=978-1907587245}}</ref> Jones spent more time on the front line (117 weeks) than any other British writer in the war. He was wounded at Mametz Wood, recuperated in the Midlands, was returned to the [[Ypres Salient]], and joined in the attack on [[Pilckem Ridge]] at [[Battle of Passchendaele|Passchendaele]] in 1917. He nearly died of [[trench fever]] in 1918, but recovered in England and was stationed in Ireland until the [[armistice of 11 November 1918]].<ref name="Engraver"/> Jones's wartime experience was the basis for his long written work ''[[In Parenthesis]]''.

===1920s===
In 1919 Jones won a government grant to return at Camberwell Art School.<ref name=Salmon>{{Cite web |author=Peter Salmon |url=http://cordite.org.au/essays/private-david-jones |title=Private David Jones's ''In Parenthesis'' and ''The Anathemata'' |date=1 May 2017 |access-date=3 May 2017 |work=Cordite Poetry Review}}</ref> From Camberwell, he followed [[Walter Bayes]] to the [[Westminster School of Art]] in central London, where he studied under him and with [[Bernard Meninsky]], and was influenced by [[Walter Sickert]], an occasional lecturer there, whom he came to know personally. Jones received instruction towards becoming a Catholic from Fr. John O'Connor, who suggested Jones visit [[Eric Gill]] and his guild of Catholic craftsmen at Ditchling in Sussex. Influenced by Gill, Jones entered the Catholic Church in 1921, chiefly, he said, because it seemed "real" in contrast to Christian alternatives. He also liked the Church's continuity with Classical antiquity.<ref name="Engraver"/> In 1922 he increasingly spent time at Ditchling, apprenticed as a carpenter but never becoming a full member of Gill's [[Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic]]. Having shown himself an incompetent carpenter, Jones turned to wood-engraving, whose rudiments [[Desmond Chute]] had taught him.<ref name="Engraver"/> In 1923 Jones worked as an illustrator, for ''The Game'' published by Gill and [[Hilary Pepler]]. He also engraved original work for Pepler's St. Dominic's Press, including ''The Rosary Book''. When Gill moved to [[Capel-y-ffin]] in the [[Black Mountains, Wales|Black Mountains]] of South Wales in 1923, Jones returned to London, but often visited Gill there and also the Benedictines on [[Caldey Island]], near [[Tenby]].

Jones was among the first modern engravers to combine white-line and black-line engraving.{{Explain|date=July 2021|reason=Not described in the Engraving and Line engraving articles}} In 1927 he joined the [[Society of Wood Engravers]]. He illustrated ''The Book of Jonah'', ''[[Aesop's Fables]].'' and, for the [[Golden Cockerel Press]], ''[[Gulliver's Travels]]''  and engraved a large, elaborate frontispiece for a Welsh translation of the Book of [[Ecclesiastes]], ''Llyfr y Pregethwr''. Subsequently [[Robert Gibbings]] commissioned him to illustrate, with eight large wood engravings, ''The Chester Play of the Deluge'' (1927), and [[Douglas Cleverdon]] commissioned him to illustrate, with eight large copper engravings, [[Samuel Taylor Coleridge|Coleridge's]] poem ''[[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]'' (1929).<ref name="Colereidge">{{Cite book |author=S.T. Colereidge|publisher=Enitharmon |quote=illustrated by David Jones, edited by Thomas Dilworth |year=2016 |title=The Rime of the Ancient Mariner |isbn=978-1904634140}}</ref> In 1930 eye-strain forced him to give up engraving.

In 1924 Jones had become engaged to marry Gill's daughter Petra, but in 1927 she broke off the engagement to marry a mutual friend. Distressed, Jones concentrated on art. Petra's long neck and high forehead continued as female features in his artwork.<ref name=RowanW>{{Cite web |author=Rowan Williams |author-link=Rowan Williams |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/03/everything-illuminated-rowan-williams-art-and-faith-david-jones |title=Everything is illuminated: Rowan Williams on the art and faith of David Jones |date=25 March 2017 |access-date=1 April 2017 |work=[[New Statesman]]}}</ref> He returned to live with his parents at Brockley, also spending time at a house they rented on the coast at [[Portslade]]. He painted prolifically and exhibited watercolour seascapes and Welsh landscapes in London galleries. In 1927 Jones made friends with [[Jim Ede]], at the [[Tate Gallery]], who introduced him to art critics and prospective buyers, including [[Helen Sutherland]], who became a patron. Ede introduced him to the painter [[Ben Nicholson]], who in 1928 had Jones elected to the [[Seven and Five Society]],  whose other members included [[Barbara Hepworth]], [[Winifred Nicholson]], [[Cedric Morris]], Christopher Wood, and [[Henry Moore]]. Jones remained a member until 1935, when he was expelled by Nicholson for not painting abstracts.<ref name="Engraver"/> Disappointed by published accounts of personal combat experience during the war, in 1928 he began writing ''In Parenthesis'', a fictional work based on his own experiences in the trenches. He was now in love with Prudence Pelham, who was its muse.

===1930s===
From 1929 through the mid-1930s, Jones took part in weekly meetings at the Chelsea house of his friend [[Thomas Ferrier Burns]] of what has been called the Chelsea Group. It included the cultural historian [[Christopher Dawson]], the philosopher [[E. I. Watkin]], the type-designer [[Stanley Morison]], [[Harman Grisewood]], [[Bernard Wall]], [[Eric Gill]], [[Martin D'Arcy]] and others. They discussed a wide range of topics in relation to Catholic Christianity and sought a religious-cultural counterpart to the [[Unified Field Theory]] sought by [[Einstein]]. To these discussions, Jones contributed his psychological theory of culture, focusing on the balance of utility (efficiency) and gratuity (beauty, truth, goodness) required for healthy civilization. The Chelsea Group would be the matrix of ''The Anathemata'', ''The Tablet'', edited by Tom Burns, and the [[Third Programme]], the BBC's cultural radio station developed and produced by Grisewood.<ref name="Engraver"/>

Jones had long suffered from [[shell-shock]], now known as [[post-traumatic stress disorder]]. It contributed to a nervous breakdown in mid-October 1932, precipitated by four months of prolific painting and writing, involving 60 large paintings and the first continuous draft of ''In Parenthesis''.<ref name="Engraver"/> His friends arranged for him to take a therapeutic trip to Jerusalem, which did not alleviate his condition, but influenced his later poetry. His breakdown precluded painting for most of the next 16 years. He was able to work at revising ''In Parenthesis''. As he revised, he read it aloud to close friends, including Jim Ede, who alerted [[Richard de la Mare]] at [[Faber and Faber]], to whom Jones agreed to submit it when complete. In 1937 it was published to very positive reviews and in 1938 won the [[Hawthornden Prize]], then the one major British literary award.

Though Jones was unable to paint, his visual works were shown in Chicago in 1933, at the Venice Biennale in 1934, and at the World's Fair, New York, in 1939. In 1944 an exhibition of his art work toured Britain.

===Later life===
Jones spent most of the Second World War in London, enduring the [[The Blitz|Blitz]]. He painted a few important pictures, and to celebrate the wedding of his friend Harman Grisewood to Margaret Bailey, wrote ''Prothalamion'' and ''Epithalamion'', which were eventually published posthumously.

In 1947 Jones created, in a single week, ten [[landscape painting|land-and-skyscape]]s at [[Helen Sutherland]]'s house in [[Cumberland]]. As in 1932, this burst of activity precipitated a nervous collapse. He underwent psychotherapy at Bowden House in [[Harrow on the Hill]], under the psychologist William ('Bill') Stevenson. Influenced by Freud, Stevenson traced Jones's breakdown to [[Oedipus complex|oedipal]] and [[sibling rivalry|sibling]] tensions, combined with [[repression (psychology)|repressed]] fear during the war, explaining that, if allowed to strengthen, repression in the sexual domain shifted to repression of artistic freedom. He advised Jones to paint and write as essential to his healing.<ref name="Engraver"/> This led Jones throughout the 1950s to make many beautiful painted inscriptions (an art form he invented), along with sometimes numinous [[still life]]s of flowers in glass [[chalices]]. He was able to publish in 1952 his epic-length poem ''[[The Anathemata]]''.

In 1954 an Arts Council tour of his work visited [[Aberystwyth]], [[Cardiff, Wales|Cardiff]], [[Swansea]], [[Edinburgh]] and the [[Tate Gallery, London]]. In 1960, Stevenson began prescribing [[barbiturates]] and other harmful drugs that sent Jones's creative life into a virtual standstill for the next 12 years, though he struggled to revise and shape mid-length poems for inclusion in ''The Sleeping Lord'' (1974), a project he managed to complete after the prescriptions were terminated in the summer of 1972.<ref name="Engraver"/> In 1974 Jones was made a [[Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour]], an honour restricted to 65 living members (excluding honorary appointments).<ref name="Dilworth2"/>

===Death===
In 1970 Jones [[hip fracture|broke the ball of his femur]] in a fall and thereafter lived in a room at Calvary Nursing Home in Harrow, where he was regularly visited by friends and died in his sleep on 27–28 October 1974. He was buried in [[Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries|Ladywell and Brockley Cemetery]]. In 1985, he was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled at [[Poets' Corner]] in [[Westminster Abbey]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Poets of the Great War |url=https://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/poets/poets.html |publisher=Brigham Young University |access-date=27 July 2021}}</ref>