Nicholas Evans (artist)
Encyclopedia
Nicholas Evans was a self-taught Welsh
artist from Aberdare
. His work was signed, and he was known best in the art world as Nick Evans.
, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales
. He began work at the age of 13 as a miner, but this lasted only for three years until his father's death in an accident at the Fforchaman Colliery, near Aberdare, in 1923. Evans was deeply affected by the death, his father’s body having been returned to the family home that same evening to be laid overnight on the kitchen table.”
At his mother's insistence, he left the pits and became a railwayman, eventually finding a job as a train engine driver for the Great Western Railway
attached to the coal industry in the Cynon Valley
.
Evans' ability to draw was discovered by one of his primary school teachers, who gave him a new pencil and encouraged him to sketch. He stopped after a while, however, as he could not afford to buy paper.
He married Annie Lambert (died 1997) in 1928. They has two sons, Victor and Peter, and one daughter, Rhoda.
Evans was a prolific artist and much of his work remains, un-photographed and un-catalogued, in the custody of his two sons, in a secure storeroom. It has been estimated that, of Evans' entire output, only five percent is currently on public display.
's Oriel Gallery in Cardiff
. He was immediately acclaimed as an original painter.
Evans' show in Cardiff was followed by another at the Browse and Darby Gallery in London
's Mayfair
. Lawrence Gowing, Professor at the Slade School compared Evans’ work with that of Diego Rivera
, the revolutionary Mexican muralist.
Evans exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy
's summer show and his pictures are today in many public galleries, including the Tate Modern
and Swansea
’s Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
. In 1987 Evans collaborated with his daughter, Rhoda, to produce a book about his art ’’Symphonies in Black’’.
Evans died in 2004 at the age of 97. His gravestone is engraved with the words: Nicholas Evans - Pilgrim and Painter: "I'd rather lead a soul to the Lord than paint a Mona Lisa
"
. But whereas fellow modern Welsh artists such as Josef Herman
and Will Roberts
had portray colliers as heroes, Evans shows them typically as victims. Writing in The Independent
, Meic Stephens wrote of Evans’ work: “There is perhaps something troglodytic about his miners, even when they take part in hunger marches or, in scenes that call to mind Stanley Spencer
's Cookham, when they ascend in swarms to heaven at the Last Trump, but the painter's sympathy for their lot gives them an iconic power.”
Shortly after his father's death, Evans experienced a spiritual conversion and joined the Pentecostal Church, to which he remained faithful for the rest of his life. He was a lay preacher often visiting nearby valley towns to preach in the street. He explained many of his paintings in terms of biblical imagery and reported that he often saw angels and the spirits of the departed in his house.
Many of Evans’ pictures have religious scenes in an industrial setting. Entombed - Jesus in the Midst (1974), for example, now in the collection of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales
, shows Christ preaching to miners at their place of work. His figures often strike biblical poses, as in Carrying out the Dead (1979). In Black Avalanche (1978) Evans responded to the 1966 Aberfan Disaster with the painting showing the central figure of a policeman carrying a child's body, surrounded by grieving parents as in a Crucifixion scene.
Many of the paintings are rendered in black and white, or with dark greys and dark blues and Evans was particularly adept at drawing colliers' tools and the brutal structures of the coalmine.
Evans continued to paint until well into his nineties. An exhibition In His Oils was held in March 2001 at the Rhondda Heritage Park
(on the site of a former mine).
Professor John Harvey http://users.aber.ac.uk/jhh/index.html, Director of the Centre for Studies in the Visual Culture of Religion at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
has described Evans as “a unique artist in Wales and unique in the genre of industrial painting, largely because I see him as fundamentally a religious artist.” and as “One of the finest painters Wales has ever produced.”
The life and work of Nicholas Evans has been examined in the BBC Radio Wales
programme All Things Considered
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
artist from Aberdare
Aberdare
Aberdare is an industrial town in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Dare and Cynon. The population at the census was 31,705...
. His work was signed, and he was known best in the art world as Nick Evans.
Early life
Evans was born in 1907 in AberdareAberdare
Aberdare is an industrial town in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Dare and Cynon. The population at the census was 31,705...
, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. He began work at the age of 13 as a miner, but this lasted only for three years until his father's death in an accident at the Fforchaman Colliery, near Aberdare, in 1923. Evans was deeply affected by the death, his father’s body having been returned to the family home that same evening to be laid overnight on the kitchen table.”
At his mother's insistence, he left the pits and became a railwayman, eventually finding a job as a train engine driver for the Great Western Railway
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...
attached to the coal industry in the Cynon Valley
Cynon Valley
The Cynon Valley , is a famous former coal mining valley within the South Wales Valleys of Wales. The Cynon Valley lies between the other mining Valley of Rhondda and the iron industrial Valley of the Merthyr Valley. Its main towns are Aberdare located North of the Valley and Mountain Ash located...
.
Evans' ability to draw was discovered by one of his primary school teachers, who gave him a new pencil and encouraged him to sketch. He stopped after a while, however, as he could not afford to buy paper.
He married Annie Lambert (died 1997) in 1928. They has two sons, Victor and Peter, and one daughter, Rhoda.
Evans was a prolific artist and much of his work remains, un-photographed and un-catalogued, in the custody of his two sons, in a secure storeroom. It has been estimated that, of Evans' entire output, only five percent is currently on public display.
Career
Evans took up drawing again in his late sixties after retirement. Initially he painted with his hands and with rags on square pieces of hardboard that he bought at a local DIY store and primed with emulsion. His hobby became an obsession and his small house in Abernant soon started to fill up with paintings stacked high in every room. He did not exhibit his work until 1978. In that year, at the age of 71, he held a one-man exhibition at the Arts CouncilArts council
An arts council is a government or private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts mainly by funding local artists, awarding prizes, and organizing events at home and abroad...
's Oriel Gallery in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
. He was immediately acclaimed as an original painter.
Evans' show in Cardiff was followed by another at the Browse and Darby Gallery in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's Mayfair
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...
. Lawrence Gowing, Professor at the Slade School compared Evans’ work with that of Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
, the revolutionary Mexican muralist.
Evans exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
's summer show and his pictures are today in many public galleries, including the Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
and Swansea
Swansea
Swansea is a coastal city and county in Wales. Swansea is in the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan. Situated on the sandy South West Wales coast, the county area includes the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw uplands...
’s Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery is the public art gallery of the city of Swansea, Wales. The gallery is situated in Alexandra Road, near Swansea railway station, opposite the old Swansea Central Library and near Swansea Central police station...
. In 1987 Evans collaborated with his daughter, Rhoda, to produce a book about his art ’’Symphonies in Black’’.
Evans died in 2004 at the age of 97. His gravestone is engraved with the words: Nicholas Evans - Pilgrim and Painter: "I'd rather lead a soul to the Lord than paint a Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...
"
Themes and style
Evans' subject matter reflected his two passions - coalmining and his Christian faithChristianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
. But whereas fellow modern Welsh artists such as Josef Herman
Josef Herman
Josef Herman, also known in Wales as Joe Bach , was a highly regarded Polish-British realist painter who influenced contemporary art, particularly in the United Kingdom . His work often had subjects of workers and was inherently political...
and Will Roberts
Will Roberts
Will Roberts was a Modern painter from Wales.Roberts was born in Ruabon, Denbighshire, the son of a railwayman of the Great Western Railway. The family moved to Neath in Glamorgan in 1918 and he studied at the local Swansea School of Art. In 1945, Roberts met the Polish artist Josef Herman...
had portray colliers as heroes, Evans shows them typically as victims. Writing in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, Meic Stephens wrote of Evans’ work: “There is perhaps something troglodytic about his miners, even when they take part in hunger marches or, in scenes that call to mind Stanley Spencer
Stanley Spencer
Sir Stanley Spencer was an English painter. Much of his work depicts Biblical scenes, from miracles to Crucifixion, happening not in the Holy Land but in the small Thames-side village where he was born and spent most of his life...
's Cookham, when they ascend in swarms to heaven at the Last Trump, but the painter's sympathy for their lot gives them an iconic power.”
Shortly after his father's death, Evans experienced a spiritual conversion and joined the Pentecostal Church, to which he remained faithful for the rest of his life. He was a lay preacher often visiting nearby valley towns to preach in the street. He explained many of his paintings in terms of biblical imagery and reported that he often saw angels and the spirits of the departed in his house.
Many of Evans’ pictures have religious scenes in an industrial setting. Entombed - Jesus in the Midst (1974), for example, now in the collection of the National Museums and Galleries of Wales
National Museum Cardiff
National Museum Cardiff is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales...
, shows Christ preaching to miners at their place of work. His figures often strike biblical poses, as in Carrying out the Dead (1979). In Black Avalanche (1978) Evans responded to the 1966 Aberfan Disaster with the painting showing the central figure of a policeman carrying a child's body, surrounded by grieving parents as in a Crucifixion scene.
Many of the paintings are rendered in black and white, or with dark greys and dark blues and Evans was particularly adept at drawing colliers' tools and the brutal structures of the coalmine.
Evans continued to paint until well into his nineties. An exhibition In His Oils was held in March 2001 at the Rhondda Heritage Park
Rhondda Heritage Park
Rhondda Heritage Park, Trehafod, Rhondda, South Wales is a tourist attraction which offers an insight into the life of the coal mining community that existed in the area until the 1980s....
(on the site of a former mine).
Professor John Harvey http://users.aber.ac.uk/jhh/index.html, Director of the Centre for Studies in the Visual Culture of Religion at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth University is a university located in Aberystwyth, Wales. Aberystwyth was a founding Member Institution of the former federal University of Wales. As of late 2006, the university had over 12,000 students spread across seventeen academic departments.The university was founded in 1872 as...
has described Evans as “a unique artist in Wales and unique in the genre of industrial painting, largely because I see him as fundamentally a religious artist.” and as “One of the finest painters Wales has ever produced.”
The life and work of Nicholas Evans has been examined in the BBC Radio Wales
BBC Radio Wales
BBC Radio Wales is the BBC's national radio station broadcasting to Wales in the English language. Operated by BBC Wales, it began broadcasting on 12 November 1978 following the demise of the old "Radio 4 Wales" when BBC Radio 4 became a national network and moved from medium wave to long wave...
programme All Things Considered
Books about Nicholas Evans
- Symphonies in Black (1987) by Rhoda Evans. ISBN 978-0862431358
- Image of the Invisible: Visualisation of Religion in the Welsh Nonconformist Traditions (1999) by Professor John Harvey, University of Wales Press. ISBN 978-0708314753