Between 10 May and 7 September this year the National Library in Aberystwyth held its important and widely publicized exhibition National Treasures: Canaletto in Aberystwyth, Idyll and Industry.  As the title hints, there were two elements to the exhibition.  The pivot between the two was a large Canaletto painting, The Stonemason’s Yard.  Canaletto’s pictures frequently capture a serene Venice, but in The Stonemason’s Yard we have a striking portrayal of daily life in a Venice of construction and manual labour.  The picture was used as a springboard for the Idyll and Industry element of the exhibition, made up of paintings which gave examples of centuries of artistic response to the industrial and urban in Wales.

The Stonemason’s Yard was also there as an embodiment of the crucial role of Wales in safeguarding the cultural heritage of the United Kingdom during the Second World War.  This was explained in an accompanying exhibition of original written documents, photographs, and contemporary film.  The film footage included dramatic scenes of huge paintings (encased for protection) on the back of lorries driving along moorland tracks to Manod Quarry near Blaenau Ffestiniog, where many spent the duration of the War.  The presence of The Stonemason’s Yard at the exhibition was the first time it had returned to Wales since it had spent time there as an evacuee during the War.

In one of the display cases of original documents was a pamphlet headed War-time evacuation to the National Library of Wales by Sir William Ll. Davies, M.A., F.S.A.  Reprinted from the Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1946.  It was no doubt a significant source for those preparing the exhibition.  William Llewelyn Davies was the Librarian of the National Library.  His contribution in the Transactions for the 1945 Session is in fact only one out of four which together give a contemporary account of what items were taken to Wales; from which institutions; where they were kept; and how the challenges of storage were overcome.  Two of the contributions came under the heading The War-Time Storage in Wales of Pictures from the National Gallery, London.  The first of these was The Course of Events by Martin Davies, and the second was Some Technical Problems by Ian Rawlins.  Finally, though it failed to attract the attention of the indexer of the volume, there was an article by Jacob Leveen of the British Museum entitled The British Museum Collections in Aberystwyth.  It is found at the end of the collection of articles and includes a supplementary list of museums and other institutions evacuated to Wales, so its absence from the index may simply reflect that it was a very late addition to the volume.

Together these articles form an absorbing record of the sheer scale of the enterprise of preserving priceless art and records from public and private collections, made more immediate by 17 high quality black and white plates.  One of the many highlights amongst the photographs is one of a large case on the back of a lorry passing under a railway bridge near Ffestiniog.  The text explains that the contained van Dyck’s Charles I on Horseback.  There were only inches to spare: and even then, that was only because the road below the bridge had been dug down 2 ft 6 inches to allow the lorry through.  The manoeuvre took half an hour.

There are many fascinating details, not least the description of the process whereby optimum relative humidity and storage temperatures were achieved in a North Wales slate mine.  It will be no surprise to anyone familiar with conditions in Wales to see recorded by Rawlins: A matter which merited serious attention throughout was the possibility of mould-growth.  The solution required experimentation: A number of worthless canvases and panels were exposed to the natural atmosphere of the cases as tests, with the result that mould appeared on one of them in 18 days, and on the others within a couple of months.  Although Rawlins did not put the point beyond doubt, these guinea pigs were presumably not recently delivered canvases and panels from the National Gallery.

Plans for the return home were begun in late 1944, and the actual move commenced in mid-1945.  By the Saturday after VE Day, about 50 of the best masterpieces from the National Gallery were back on public display.  The return of National Gallery paintings was complete by the first week of December 1945, just over 6 years and the three months after the first load had left London in anticipation of the conflict.

(This is the first of the four articles on the transfer published in the 1945 issue of Transactions. Look out for the remaining articles in succeeding weeks.)

To read the original article click the link below and follow the right hand arrows to page 1 of the Contents.

The Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion reach a venerable 150 years in 2023 and throughout the year we will be publishing articles on the website that have appeared during the decades. Many deal with issues that have since ceased to be important, but others still have a strong contemporary resonance.

Look out on the website for regular new uploads of this fascinating material. Or you can read all the articles by visiting the National Library website where you will find the material at https://journals.library.wales/browse/1386666