Sir Kyffin Williams; Guardian obit
Hyfler/Rosner
One of the great Welsh artists, he captured the majestic
landscapes of his native land
Rian Evans
Monday September 4, 2006
Guardian
The art of Sir Kyffin Williams, who has died at the age of
88, captured the imagination of the Welsh public. His dark,
monumental landscapes of Snowdonia came to assume an iconic
status and so too did the man, affectionately known simply
as Kyffin. But, as a Royal Academician since 1974, his work
was also familiar far beyond Wales and, of late, much sought
after. This was hardly what was envisaged when, upon being
invalided out of the army in 1941 because of epilepsy, a
doctor suggested he took up art a "for the sake of his
health".
Kyffin liked to say that he had had no talent, partly for
fear of seeming boastful, partly because it had taken
persistence to develop the underlying gift and his highly
distinctive palette-knife style. But once determined on an
artistic course, his passion for work was all-consuming and
there was never any question as to subject matter. The north
Wales of his upbringing, the mountains that he had roamed,
first as a boy with his dog, later walking with the hounds,
demanded to be drawn or painted.
Kyffin was born at Llangefni on Anglesey. His bank manager
father and his mother were respectively the children of
Church of England rectors on the island, and Anglesey's
country parishes, its farmland and the stone walls that
defined his early world would define his drawings. But
family tradition ordained that John - for that was how he
was known until the need arose for a more painterly name -
and his elder brother, Richard, should be sent away, first
to prep school and then to Shrewsbury School. It explained
the English public-school accent of a committed Welshman,
though he liked slipping into dialect with the
Welsh-speaking farmers of the Lleyn peninsula to which the
family had removed. At 18, work with a firm of Pwllheli
land-agents gave him an even greater familiarity with the
area and, when a clear day afforded him a vista of Cardigan
Bay sweeping down to St David's Head, he was master of all
he surveyed.
Joining the 6th Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers as a
lieutenant in 1937 offered new prospects, but the onset of
epilepsy put paid to an army career and it was a slightly
disillusioned young man who enrolled at the Slade School,
evacuated for the war years to Oxford. According to Kyffin,
his tutors mainly despaired of him, but the encouragement he
received from Allan Gwynne-Jones would establish the tenor
of his teaching at Highgate School, where Kyffin was senior
art master from 1944 until 1973. Royal Academicians Anthony
Green and the late Patrick Procktor were to pay tribute to
his influence, and composers John Tavener and John Rutter
were pupils too. Yet, throughout his London teaching years,
Kyffin's heart remained in Wales, and he returned to paint
at every opportunity.
In 1948, his first exhibition at the prestigious Colnaghi's
had marked an already auspicious start; he showed there
twice again and frequently at the Leicester Galleries and in
Wales. Election as an associate of the Royal Academy in 1970
and then as a member in 1974 set a seal on this early part
of his career. But Kyffin credited my father, the late poet
and director John Ormond, with bringing his painting to an
altogether wider public through two early BBC film
portraits. It was their friendship that, decades on, led to
my present involvement on a biography, though Kyffin's own
engaging memoirs in Across the Straits (1973) and A Wider
Sky (1991) will always constitute the last word.
In 1968, Kyffin received a Winston Churchill Fellowship to
record the Welsh community in Patagonia. That visit resulted
in works of unusually vibrant colour; it also reinforced
awareness of his roots. In due course, he returned
permanently to Anglesey and, as his output increased, he
also immersed himself in projects which, arguably, made as
important a contribution to artistic life in Wales as his
painting. As president of the Royal Cambrian Academy, he
inspired a revitalisation and the transfer to a splendid new
gallery in Conwy. Other Welsh galleries were similarly
indebted to him and he was instrumental in securing for
Anglesey the drawings of wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe
and, in turn, a gallery to house them. To complement that
collection, Kyffin had purchased bronzes of birds and
animals, often from sculptors whom he invited to show
alongside him. Those gestures were characteristic, born of
his love of fine work and his concern that Wales should
possess such examples. His relationship with the National
Library of Wales in Aberystwyth was predicated on that
understanding. Relations with the National Museum and
Galleries of Wales were more fraught. He gave long service
to their art committees and was responsible for the
acquisition of work by Gwen John long before her importance
was generally acknowledged but he was critical of the lack
of proper recognition for the sculptor Ivor Roberts-Jones
and also of the absence of a specific gallery for Welsh art.
Kyffin was supportive of young artists, but this
mild-mannered man could be scathing about"junk art". His
views were much quoted, but the criticism sprang from a
concern that traditional values and, most of all, the
discipline of draughtsmanship risked being eroded. Painting
fast and fluently, he was nevertheless fanatical about
structure and form and his descriptions of the process of
painting were coloured by the language of military
engagement; he "did battle" with a picture and being
"defeated" by it made him miserable.
The darkness implicit in so many of Kyffin's mountain
landscapes was a facet of his own make-up. He recognised in
it the Celtic tendency to melancholy, but believed it to be
exacerbated by circumstance, instinctively feeling that a
certain despair and gloom were the logical sequel to his
grand mal seizures. So the ostensibly calm exterior - army
officer bearing, country gentlemena tweed suits,
aristocratic nose, luxuriant moustache - hid a more complex
personality. That was reflected most tellingly in his
turbulent seascapes and it was stormy weather, over land or
sea, which fuelled the nervous excitement and apprehension
that tormented him but, paradoxically, produced his greatest
work. A sense of his own vulnerability heightened Kyffin's
compassion for others. Thus his astute portraits: catching
likeness with a flair which belied the bold slabs of oil
paint, but gaining their strength from what he read in the
eyes.
Though ardent in his admiration of Richard Wilson and
adamant that Wales should reclaim their artists of that
stature, Kyffin's influences were primarily expressionist.
But the painter with whom he felt an affinity was van Gogh
and it was not self-aggrandisement but a perpetual
fascination - not least that they were both epileptic - that
led to him to make comparisons. It was certainly his
perception of the difficulties of epilepsy, and perhaps too
its stigma, that caused Kyffin not to marry, despite many
loves and also engagements, and being denied a wife and
family always pained him. A vast number of devoted friends
helped compensate. The generosity and support of the Marquis
and Marchioness of Anglesey were almost to constitute
patronage: as a tenant on their estate, his cottage faced
the Menai Straits, with the peaks of Snowdonia forming his
horizon.
Kyffin was immensely lovable, with great charm and smiling
eyes but, deep down, he was a shy man who took refuge in the
wealth of stories of which he was a brilliant raconteur.
This accomplishment, and the ease with which he could talk
with anyone from hill farmers to royalty, he attributed to
his father. He also had a prodigious memory for detail -
visual and factual - and for genealogy. Perhaps inevitably
in someone who knew his own line would end with him, he was
particularly proud of his antecedents, among them Thomas
Williams the 18th-century copper magnate; the great-aunt who
married geologist Sir Andrew Ramsay; the great-grandfather
who, as incumbent of a parish overlooking Holyhead, would
ride out to sea to rescue those shipwrecked on the Skerries.
Kyffin played down his own honours, but they were countless.
His name, from "cyffin" denotes a boundary and, while he
often thought of himself as an outsider, his deputy
lieutenancy of Gwynedd and his knighthood suggested
otherwise. He shared his wonderful humour till the very end
and the irony that his final illness, lung cancer, may have
been caused by the years of using lead-based oil paints, was
not lost on him.
· John Kyffin Williams, artist, born May 9 1918; died
September 1 2006