In the art of the twentieth century David Jones is a distinctive figure, original and independent, a strange meteor in a firmament of known and plotted stars. In an age of pragmatism his is a rare spirit.
The influence of the artist’s Welsh inheritance is clear. He is the first to acknowledge the debt to his Welsh origins.
As a child he made many drawings of animals, of bears and wolves, lions and tigers, especially the feline creatures great and small. These anticipate his later interests and achievements, the spirited studies of lithe panther, lynx, and jaguar. His feeling for the animal world is truly Franciscan; this compassion for the beasts of the field finds expression in very many of his drawings and engravings.
His sense of vocation as an artist remained clear and in 1909 he entered Camberwell School of Art: his energies and talents continued to be divided between animal drawings and imaginative paintings illustrating Welsh legend.
His early prints are disciplined in style in the tradition of the medieval woodcut and reflect the formal approach of his masters, but as he acquired the mastery of his burin and developed a personal means of expression, he brought to the boxwood a delicacy of line and texture and a liveliness of statement for which it is difficult to find an equal in the history of the art.
In 1928 he engraved on copper the series of illustrations to Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, works in line-engraving which for their grace and eloquence stand alone among intaglio prints.
Occasionally he painted in oils, but it was in watercolour that he found his true medium, a sensitive vehicle for the grace and subtlety of his art and for the nervous eloquence of his personal statement. It is on his large watercolours that his reputation is based.
In 1929 an exhibition of his work was shown at the Goupil Gallery in London. This included a number of watercolours made in France; in 1930 Heal’s Mansard Gallery arranged a special exhibition of animal drawings, many of which had been made at the London Zoo.