Welsh Journals

tive Radnorshire in both his early and later career. We were particularly delighted to secure the loan of his most important early subject painting A Land Storm, with the Story of Dido and Aeneas from the Hermitage in St Petersburg. The painting had been successfully exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1769 and later purchased within Jones's lifetime by the most important collector of his age, Catherine the Great, although the artist ap- pears to have been unaware of the acquisition. The work was engraved by Woollett and exhibited at The Society of Artists in 1787 (Fig. 1). The picture returned to Britain in May 2003, for the first time since it had left with her agents in the eighteenth century. Due to Russian bureaucracy we nearly had a large empty space at the Private View but at the last minute it was given clearance and arrived just in time! This spectacular work dom- inated the early section of the exhibition in Cardiff. Close examination of it revealed how indebted Jones was to Wilson in both the painting of the distant buildings, which as Martin Postle has pointed out are almost iden- tical to the Tate Britain's View of Rome and the Vatican' and in the waterfall which bears a striking resemblance to Lydford Waterfall, Tavistock in the National Museum & Gallery's' own collection.2 The exhibition was opened in Cardiff on 21 May by Alan Pugh the Welsh Assembly Minister for Culture, Media and Sport. An actor read the poet laureate Andrew Motion's poem A Wall in Naples', which was inspired by the tiny painting in the National Gallery by Jones of the same title and a new Welsh poem was commissioned and read based upon the early history painting The Bard. The catalogue, a lavish fully colour illustrated volume published by the National Museums & Galleries and Yale University Press, was launched on the same day and it quickly became obvious that it was to be a best seller. Bob Symonds of HTV Wales produced an excellent documentary programme devoted to Jones which was screened the follow- ing evening and S4C also later aired a well-researched tribute to the artist. The press coverage during the opening week was extremely positive. A few days after the opening on a hot summer evening, a charming event was organised at the Hay Literary Festival, entitled 'Jones on Jones'. Original watercolours were displayed and I was interviewed about the research we had carried out on the artist by Jonathan Jones, art critic of The Guardian. The evening was a sell-out success and the sheer number of catalogues, which I signed afterwards, was a tribute to the growing popularity of this son of Radnorshire, Thomas Jones. Jones has long been recognised and revered in Radnorshire. This is not the first article to appear in the Transactions of the Radnorshire Society devoted to Jones of Pencerrig. It follows important contributions from Stedman Davies, RCB Oliver, Prys Morgan and Joy Ashton,3 all of whom