Three Kings by David Jones,
a new Methodist Modern Art Collection artwork

The Methodist Modern Art Collection has acquired a new artwork, the accompanying print to the much-loved woodblock already in the collection - Three Kings by the painter, engraver and poet David Jones. Created 100 years ago for a Christmas card by David Jones, it is represented again for this year’s electronic Christmas card from the Methodist Church. This acquisition was made possible via the Hilda Stevens bequest.

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Peter Wakelin, a Methodist Modern Art Collection Management Committee member and author of Hill-rhythms: David Jones + Capel-y-ffin, has written this commentary on the work:

One of the most distinctive and unexpected works in the Collection is a woodblock, just 8cm wide, engraved a century ago by David Jones. As a printing block, it is not a finished artwork but a milestone on the journey to making one, and a beautiful and fascinating object itself. Now the Collection has a copy of the final work, a small print titled Three Kings.

Jones spent over a decade at art school and at war on the Western Front before studying wood engraving with Desmond Chute at Ditchling. The process involved making fine cuts in wooden blocks, then inking the surface to take an impression. Within a few years Jones had produced some of the century’s greatest wood engravings.

This career turning point coincided with his stays in the Roman Catholic artistic community at the former monastery of Capel-y-ffin, high in the Black Mountains on the borders of Breconshire, Monmouthshire and Herefordshire. He arrived at Christmas 1924, aged 29, and spent over half of the next two years there. Its landscape resurfaced in his imagination for the rest of his life. He recognised this as a new beginning and, returning to his parents’ home in April 1925, burned almost all his preceding work.

Jones liked to print engravings to give friends over Christmas. Three Kings was made at Christmas 1926/7 when he was experimenting with the greater pressure of an intaglio press. This allowed him to print ink from the engraved cuts rather than the surface of the plate so that the lines appeared as black on white; the opposite of his earlier wood engravings. It is fascinating to compare the final Three Kings with the block, reversed in tone and composition. Jones probably made only a few impressions, but after he died in 1974 Douglas Cleverdon commissioned prints from the original blocks for his catalogue and portfolio The Engravings of David Jones. Our new acquisition is a printer’s proof.

The exotically attired magi bow their crowned heads as they tread the long path through mountains and woods that echo Capel-y-ffin towards Jones’s vision of Bethlehem under the star. The words from Isaiah 60:6 were sung in carols: ‘All shall come from Sheba’ bringing gold and frankincense. A wounded tree foreshadows the Crucifixion and recalls Jones’s experiences of the destruction of men and nature in the Great War. Owing to eye strain and bouts of post-traumatic anxiety and depression, Jones struggled increasingly with the intense concentration engraving required. After the 1920s, though he always kept his inks and chisels and continued to paint and write, one of Britain’s greatest printmakers never worked in the medium again.

Three Kings, 1981 by David Jones (1895-1974) Wood engraving (intaglio print), 29 x 25cm. Methodist Modern Art Collection, MCMAC: 063 Image Copyright © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. The Methodist Church Registered Charity no. 1132208