National Museum Cardiff is a museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 and art gallery

Art gallery

An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection...

 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...

, 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...

. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

National Museum Wales

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, formerly the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, comprises eight museums in Wales:* National Museum Cardiff* St Fagans: National History Museum, Cardiff* Big Pit National Coal Museum, Blaenavon...

 (formerly the National Museums and Galleries of Wales). Entry is kept free by a grant from the Welsh Assembly Government

Welsh Assembly Government

The Welsh Government is the devolved government of Wales. It is accountable to the National Assembly for Wales, the legislature which represents the interests of the people of Wales and makes laws for Wales...

.

The National Museum of Wales was founded in 1907, when it inherited the collection of the Cardiff Museum, which shared the building of Cardiff Central Library

Cardiff Central Library

Cardiff Central Library , is the main library in the city centre of Cardiff, Wales. Four buildings have been named as such, with the newest building opening on 14 March 2009 and officially being opened a few months later on 18 June 2009 by the Manic Street Preachers...

. Construction of a new building in the civic complex of Cathays Park

Cathays Park

In addition to the large lawn in front of the City Hall, Cathays Park includes three formal gardens. All of the spaces are within conservation areas and many of the surrounding buildings are listed. The open spaces are very important to the image of the city. Several important buildings overlook...

 began in 1912, but owing to the First World War it did not open to the public until 1927. The architects were Arnold Dunbar Smith and Cecil Brewer, although the building as it now stands is a heavily truncated version of their design.

The museum has collections of archaeology, botany, fine and applied art, geology and zoology.

Art collections

The National Museum of Art opened in 2011.

The collection of Old Master paintings in Cardiff includes, among other notable works, The Virgin and Child between Saint Helena and St Francis by Amico Aspertini

Amico Aspertini

Amico Aspertini is an Italian Renaissance painter whose complex, eccentric, and eclectic style anticipates Mannerism. He is considered among the first of the Bolognese School of painting.-Biography:...

, The Poulterer's Shop by Frans Snyders and A Calm by Jan van de Cappelle

Jan van de Cappelle

Jan van de Cappelle was a Dutch Golden Age painter of seascapes and winter landscapes, also notable as an industrialist and art collector. He is "now considered the outstanding marine painter of 17th century Holland"...

. A collection of landscape paintings in the classical tradition includes works by Claude

Claude Lorrain

Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French Claude Gellée, , dit le Lorrain) Claude Lorrain, , traditionally just Claude in English (also Claude Gellée, his real name, or in French...

, Gaspard Dughet

Gaspard Dughet

Gaspard Dughet , also known as Gaspard Poussin, was a French painter born in Rome.A pupil of Nicolas Poussin, Gaspard Dughet was the brother of Poussin's wife...

, Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa

Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet and printmaker, active in Naples, Rome and Florence. As a painter, he is best known as an "unorthodox and extravagant" and a "perpetual rebel" proto-Romantic.-Early life:...

 and two works by Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin

Nicolas Poussin was a French painter in the classical style. His work predominantly features clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. His work serves as an alternative to the dominant Baroque style of the 17th century...

: The Funeral of Phocion

The Funeral of Phocion

thumb|right|350px|The National Museum Cardiff version.The Funeral of Phocion is a 1648 painting, also known as The Burial of Phocion, Landscape with the Funeral of Phocion and Landscape with the Body of Phocion Carried out of Athens, by French artist Nicolas Poussin. Phocion was an Athenian...

and The Finding of Moses (the latter owned jointly by the Museum and the National Gallery

National gallery

The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...

, London). These works prefigure the career of the Welsh-born Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson (painter)

Richard Wilson was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country.' He is considered to be the...

, called "the father of British landscape painting". In 1979 four cartoons for tapestries illustrating scenes from the Aeneid

Aeneid

The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...

were bought as works by Peter Paul Rubens, but the attribution is now disputed.

There is a gallery devoted to British patronage of the eighteenth century, in particular that of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, who was nicknamed 'the Welsh Medici

Medici

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

' for his lavish spending on the arts. Included is a portrait of Williams-Wynn in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 with fellow Tourists by Pompeo Batoni

Pompeo Batoni

Pompeo Girolamo Batoni was an Italian painter whose style incorporated elements of the French Rococo, Bolognese classicism, and nascent Neoclassicism.-Biography:He was born in Lucca, the son of a goldsmith, Paolino Batoni...

, one of his second wife by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...

 and his chamber organ

Organ (music)

The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

 designed by Robert Adam

Robert Adam

Robert Adam was a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam , Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him...

. Other paintings of note from this period is a portrait of Viscountess Elizabeth Bulkeley of Beaumaris as the mythological character Hebe

Hebe (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Hēbē is the goddess of youth . She is the daughter of Zeus and Hera. Hebe was the cupbearer for the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, serving their nectar and ambrosia, until she was married to Heracles ; her successor was the young Trojan prince Ganymede...

, by the 'sublime and terrible' George Romney

George Romney (painter)

George Romney was an English portrait painter. He was the most fashionable artist of his day, painting many leading society figures - including his artistic muse, Emma Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson....

, and Johann Zoffany

Johann Zoffany

Johan Zoffany, Zoffani or Zauffelij was a German neoclassical painter, active mainly in England...

's group portrait of Henry Knight, a Glamorgan

Glamorgan

Glamorgan or Glamorganshire is one of the thirteen historic counties and a former administrative county of Wales. It was originally an early medieval kingdom of varying boundaries known as Glywysing until taken over by the Normans as a lordship. Glamorgan is latterly represented by the three...

 landowner, with his children.

The collection of French art assembled by Margaret

Margaret Davies

Margaret Sidney Davies , was a Welsh art collector and patron of the arts. With her sister Gwendoline, she bequeathed a total of 260 works, particularly strong in Impressionist and 20th-century art, which formed the basis of the present-day National Museum Wales' international collection...

 and Gwendoline Davies

Gwendoline Davies

Gwendoline Elizabeth Davies, CH , was a granddaughter of the philanthropist David Davies Llandinam. Together with her sister Margaret, she is remembered as a patron of the arts in Wales and important collector of Impressionist and 20th-century art...

, granddaughters of the wealthy industrialist David Davies

David Davies (industrialist)

David Davies was a Welsh industrialist and Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1874 and 1886. Davies was often known as David Davies Llandinam , in order to differentiate him from others of the same name.Davies was the son of David Davies and his wife Elizabeth...

 bequeathed to the National Museum in the 1950s and 1960s, make Wales's National Gallery one of international standing. It includes the largest group of paintings by Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier

Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....

 in the world and the most important by Jean-François Millet

Jean-François Millet

Jean-François Millet was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France...

 in Britain. Works by Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...

 include San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk and examples form his Rouen Cathedral

Rouen Cathedral (Monet)

The Rouen Cathedral series captures the façade of the cathedral at different times of the day and year, and reflects changes in its appearance under different lighting conditions.-Date:...

and Water Lilies

Water Lilies

Water Lilies is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet . The paintings depict Monet's flower garden at Giverny and were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life...

series. Post-impressionism

Post-Impressionism

Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...

 is represented by Van Gogh's

Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

 late work Rain at Auvers

Auvers-sur-Oise

Auvers-sur-Oise is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris. It is associated with several famous artists, the most prominent being Vincent van Gogh.-History:...

, and by Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne

Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...

's The François Zola Dam, the first painting by the artist to be displayed in a British public collection. The two most famous works in the Davies Sisters' collection are La Parisienne by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...

, exhibited in the First Impressionist Exhibition, and a version of Rodin's

Auguste Rodin

François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...

 Kiss

The Kiss (Rodin sculpture)

The Kiss is an 1889 marble sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Like many of Rodin's best-known individual sculptures, including The Thinker, the embracing couple depicted in the sculpture appeared originally as part of a group of reliefs decorating Rodin's monumental bronze portal The...

cast in bronze

Bronze

Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...

.

The art gallery has works by all of the notable Welsh art

Welsh art

Welsh art refers to the traditions in the visual arts associated with Wales and its people. Wales cannot claim to have been a major centre of the visual arts at any point, and Welsh art is essentially a regional variant of the forms and styles of the rest of the British Isles; a very different...

ists, including landscapes by Richard Wilson

Richard Wilson (painter)

Richard Wilson was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country.' He is considered to be the...

 and the pioneering Thomas Jones

Thomas Jones (artist)

Thomas Jones was a British landscape painter. He was a pupil of Richard Wilson and was best known in his lifetime as a painter of Welsh and Italian landscapes in the style of his master. However, Jones's reputation grew in the 20th century when more unconventional works by him, ones not been...

. There is a considerable body of work by John Gibson

John Gibson (sculptor)

John Gibson, was a Welsh sculptor.-Early life:He was born near Conwy, Wales, his father being a market gardener. To his mother, whom he described as ruling his father and all the family, he owed the energy and determination which carried him over every obstacle.When he was nine years old the...

, Queen Victoria's

Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....

 favourite sculptor, and major paintings by Augustus John

Augustus John

Augustus Edwin John OM, RA, was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom....

 and his sister Gwen John

Gwen John

Gwendolen Mary John was a Welsh artist who worked in France for most of her career. She is noted for her still lifes and for her portraits, especially of anonymous female sitters...

, including the former's famous image of Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...

. Ceri Richards

Ceri Richards

-Biography:Richards was born in the village of Dunvant, near Swansea, the son of Thomas Coslett Richards and Sarah Richards . He and his younger brother and sister, Owen and Esther, were brought up in a highly cultured, working-class environment...

 is well represented. The artistic output of David Jones

David Jones (poet)

David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...

 is well-represented, but seldom on display owing to the fragile nature of his works on paper. Wales's most prominent contemporary painter, Sir Kyffin Williams

Kyffin Williams

Sir John "Kyffin" Williams, KBE, RA was a Welsh landscape painter who lived at Pwllfanogl, Llanfairpwll on the Island of Anglesey...

 (1918–2006), also features in the collection.

The collection of 20th century art includes works by sculptors

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

 Jacob Epstein

Jacob Epstein

Sir Jacob Epstein KBE was an American-born British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902, becoming a British citizen in 1911. He often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter...

 and Eric Gill

Eric Gill

Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...

 and painters including 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...

, the British Impressionist Wynford Dewhurst

Wynford Dewhurst

Wynford Dewhurst, R.B.A. was an English Impressionist painter and important writer on art. He spent considerable time in France and his work was profoundly influenced by Claude Monet.-Biography:Wynford Dewhurst was born in Manchester in 1864...

, L. S. Lowry

L. S. Lowry

Laurence Stephen Lowry was an English artist born in Barrett Street, Stretford, Lancashire. Many of his drawings and paintings depict nearby Salford and surrounding areas, including Pendlebury, where he lived and worked for over 40 years at 117 Station Road , opposite St...

 and Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...

. Works by contemporary artists are on rotational display, including those by Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...

, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach

Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...

 and Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....

.

External links

• National Museum Cardiff - official site
• National Museum Wales - in Welsh