Fonds GB 0210 ALFRNES - Alfred Janes Papers

Alfred George Anstee Janes was born in Swansea on 30 June 1911, the son of a greengrocer, and attended Bishop Gore School and the Swansea College of Art. His artwork showed promise at an early age and in 1928, when he was sixteen, his work was exhibited at the National Eisteddfod, Treorchy. He became known for his portraiture and in 1931 his portrait of fellow Swansea artist Mervyn Levy was much praised, following which Janes won a scholarship to the Royal Academy Schools in London.

In the early 1930s Janes became part of a group of Swansea artists and writers (known as the ‘Kardomah gang’ due to their preferred meeting place at the Kardomah Café, Swansea) that included Vernon Watkins, Charles Fisher, John Prichard, Mervyn Levy, Bert Trick, and Dylan Thomas, who was introduced to Janes via their mutual friend, the composer Daniel Jones. When Janes moved to London to take up his place at the Royal Academy of Arts he famously found himself sharing a flat with Thomas and Levy, an environment where he painted his most well-known portrait of Thomas in 1934. Janes returned to live in Swansea in 1936 and took up teaching at Swansea College of Art, before enlisting in wartime service where he was posted to Egypt to work in a prisoner-of-war camp, where he learned Swahili and Italian; some of the friendships he made with the Italian prisoners lasted for the rest of his life. He married Mary Ross at Swansea's Guildhall in 1940 while on special leave from war service, and they had two children together, Ross and Hilly Janes. Following the war the Janes family lived at Nicholaston Hall, Gower, before moving to Dulwich in 1963 when Janes took up a lecturing post at the Croydon College of Art, where he lived until his death on 3 February, 1999.

Throughout his career Janes became known for his portraits of the ‘Kardomah gang’ including those of Dylan Thomas (whom he painted and drew three times, in 1934, 1953, and 1964), Mervyn Levy (1931 and 1935), Daniel Jones (1947 and 1949), and Vernon Watkins (1949), as well as his more powerful and thought-provoking works such as ‘Salome’ (1938) and his painting of the bombed-out Kardomah Cafe on Castle Street, Swansea, after the 1941 Blitz (1947). Respected as one of the finest Welsh artists of the 20th century, his works have been exhibited at galleries in Wales, London, and beyond.