A striking new portrait of the Archbishop of Wales by Wales’ leading portrait painter has been unveiled today (December 10).
The oil painting of Dr Barry Morgan is the work of the renowned Welsh artist David Griffiths and will hang in the foyer of the Representative Body of the Church in Wales on Cathedral Road in Cardiff.
Griffiths, whose previous work includes his 2003 study of Prince Charles on show at Cardiff City Hall, was commissioned by the Archbishop after the pair met through a love of art. Visiting art galleries while living in North Wales, Dr Morgan began collecting work by Griffiths and over the years the two became friends. This is the second portrait Griffiths has painted of Dr Morgan.
Dr Morgan said, “It is traditional for the Archbishop of Wales to choose a painter for an official portrait and I was delighted to commission David Griffiths. He is an immensely gifted and well respected Welsh artist who has captured the essence of many well known people during his long career. Whether or not he has achieved that with this new picture is probably not for me to say but I am very pleased with the result.
“As well as being one of Britain’s foremost portrait painters, David is also an excellent landscape artist, a skill he vastly underestimates in himself. Not only, therefore, his portraits, but his landscapes too are striking and arresting.”
Dr Morgan is the latest in a line-up of public figures who have sat for Griffiths. His Cardiff studio is a Welsh hall of fame. Huge frames show off vibrant oils of famous faces from Lord Tonypandy and Bryn Terfel to Joe Calzaghe and George Melly. He has also painted the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, the actress Sian Phillips, rugby player Barry John and singer Sir Geraint Evans. There is even a quirky tribute to Wales’ most famous artist, Sir Kyffin Williams, whom he has also painted – the man who framed all Kyffin’s pictures, “Derek the Framer”, is himself beautifully captured at work.
Dr Morgan, says Griffiths, was one of his easier subjects to paint. “I knew of him for many years as a connoisseur of art. He is terribly well versed in it and it’s nice to have a subject with whom you can have a good rapport. He understands artists and was happy to let me get on with the job without interfering. Like me he appreciates the impressionist style as it has more texture and fluidity and feels spontaneous. It’s a style I’ve grown into over the years. I have changed from looking for photographic accuracy of a person to capturing an image of their soul, the inner person.
“Barry has an expressive face. There is something of the craftsman in him, too, with large, strong hands and a ruggedness which he might have got from his father who was a miner. I tried to bring this out in the picture.”
Educated at Pwllheli Grammer school, Griffiths trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He says his artistic inheritance came from his grandfather, also a portrait painter, whose portrait of Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone hung in Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery in 1889 and now has pride of place in his studio. His own career took off when he was chosen to paint Prince Charles receiving the freedom of the city of Cardiff in the year of his investiture.
