FEATURE
‘He placed Himself in the Order of Signs’ Dr Mary A. Coghill remembers David Jones (1895-1974) painter, poet and World War I veteran
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David Jones in 1914: he tried a monastic lifestyle at Capel-y-ffin in South Wales and then with the Benedictines on Caldey Island
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Latin Mass will be said for the repose of the soul of David Jones at 4pm on 13 October 2018 in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Cathedral. The Mass will be said by Father John Scott. All are welcome to attend. This is the regular monthly Latin Mass Society Mass and the dedication to David Jones is with their kind permission. David Jones was always interested in the pictorial arts and he became a prolific and well known artist. He attended Camberwell Art School before volunteering for the First World War. The photo is of David Jones as a young man just before he went to France. It is copyright of the Trustees of the David Jones Estate and is reproduced here with their kind permission. He served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers and was wounded more than once. It was while he was in the trenches that he witnessed a Catholic Mass being said in a barn, with bales of straw as the altar, and this began his eventual conversion to Catholicism. After the war he completed his studies at the Westminster School of Art and often attended Mass at Westminster Cathedral nearby. Monsignor John O'Connor instructed David Jones and received him into the Catholic Church in 1921 (he also received G.K. Chesterton into the Catholic Church in 1922). It is hard to do justice to a life that was a pilgrimage of the artist’s search to express art and sacrament. His early biblical themed woodcuts and etchings are apparently simple but express a committed religious expression. His faith was interpreted through profound reading and lengthy discussions concerning his faith and art. He lived for a time with Eric Gill and The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling, Sussex. He then tried a more monastic lifestyle at Capel-y-ffin in South Wales and then with the Benedictines on Caldey Island.
AUTUMN 2018
