“The Lancers “ (later “Ponies on a Welsh Hill-slope”), David Jones 1926, Private Collection.
In the summer of 1926, David Jones was in the Black Mountains at Capel-y-ffin and it was there that he began to engrave on copper. Despite the fact that as a medium Jones found metal engraving technically quite difficult and unforgiving, the simplicity of line eventually achieved appealed to him. In his introduction to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” of 1964 he wrote of “a lyricism inherent in the clean line, furrowed free, fluent engraved line” and “It may well have been an advantage that I was a novice in the craft of metal-engraving … for at least that precluded cleverness and any attempt at complexity.” In this engraving there is a subtle interplay of open and closed form and the simplicity of black ink on white paper, beautifully evoking the openness of the mountain terrain. The curved lines of the two ponies and the downward thrust of their long necks “rhymes” with the steep rise and and fall of the hills behind. From an early age Jones drew animals. In religious terms he would come to see in their creatureliness a reminder that we too are his creatures. This is particularly evident in his illustrations of the nativity. Jones was particularly sensitive to the “continuities” across the whole of creation and indeed through time and even into myth. He first entitled this work “The Lancers”, perhaps in reference to the ponies said to have been set free to roam the hills after the defeat of King Arthur and his knights at the Battle of Camlann, in which, the legend says, he was fatally wounded. So in fact, the seeming simplicity of black lines on white paper holds in place a rich complexity. On this first day of the Season of Creation, this “novice” engraving offers us a good place to begin.
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