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Iris David
Header: The Glyn Vivian Art Gallery is on the left and Swansea Library on the right.
Caretaker father responsible for countless treasures
Caretaker father responsible for countless treasures
Born into a world surrounded by art
Born into a world surrounded by art
Iris David was born into an unrivalled world of treasures. Unfortunately, they did not belong to her family. “But I enjoyed them all the same,” she laughed.
As far as anyone knows, 90-year-old Iris is the only person to have been born in Swansea’s Glynn Vivian Art Gallery.
Her father was the caretaker, and the family lived in a spacious flat on the premises. For the first 25 years of her life, she was surrounded by valuable paintings and priceless Swansea porcelain.
"Not that it did me much good in school," she remembered. "I couldn't draw a line.”
Thomas Knibbs, caretaker of the Glynn Vivian art gallery, Swansea, with his wife Ethel and daughter Iris.
“Every art lesson I had to endure hearing my teacher telling the class that here was this girl lucky enough to live in the Glynn Vivian and be absolutely without talent.”
Iris's father, Thomas Knibbs, had been valet to Graham Vivian, the millionaire squire of Clyne Castle.
"Dad was about 20 when he took the job," said Iris. “It was a position for a single man because it entailed a lot of travelling.”
“Graham Vivian, then 73, was still a passionate collector of fine art, which meant regular travel to the Continent. Paris would be first stop, then Rome, Naples, Milan and Monte Carlo.”
"As personal valet, dad was on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes he had to get up at night to wash Graham's hands and comb his hair.”
"There was very little free time, but he gained a real knowledge of, and love for, the fine arts.”
The Glyn Vivian Art Gallery is on the left, with Swansea Library on the right
GRAHAM'S brother, Richard Glyn Vivian, was another a id collector avid art collector.
In 1905 he offered his collection to Swansea Corporation, together with £6,000 to build a gallery. He laid the foundation stone in 1909, but died before the gallery opened in 1911.
The gallery presented Thomas with the opportunity to get away from valeting and to marry Ethel Zebedee, a lady's maid whom he had met in Gloucestershire and had had his eye on for years. More than 300 men applied for the job of caretaker, but Thomas's invaluable knowledge won the day.
A year after Thomas and Ethel were married and set up home in the gallery Iris arrived.
"The flat was very nice," she said. "We had a living-dining room, a front sitting room, a kitchen with a covered bath, a main bedroom.
"But it was a very lonely childhood. There were other caretakers in the buildings next door and across the road, but no children. I didn't really have any friends until I started going to Terrace Road school.” Her acquaintances, however, included some who were or would become famous.
“Artists like Alfred Janes and Mervyn Levy would come in and they’d always have a little chat with me,” said Iris.
BIRTHPLACE The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. Iris David is believed to be the only person born there.
Evan Walters, the Llangyfelach-born painter, always used to give me sixpence. My father used to say he couldn’t really afford it but the sixpence was always there.”
Even as a teenager, Iris loved paintings and china and regularly helped her father to wash and dry the gallery’s priceless collection of porcelain.
“We used ordinary soap and, touch wood, I never dropped anything,” she joked.
In those days the marble ground floor and staircase were washed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday by Billy Williams, of Morriston, who used a mop, a long-handled scrubbing brush and liberal amounts of Gospo cleaner. "The wooden floors were polished twice a week with Ronuck,' Iris said.
"I always remember the gallery being beautiful and as clean as a new pin."
Iris left the Glynn Vivian in 1937 when she married her journalist husband and went to Birmingham. But she well remembers the care her father took of Swansea's art treasures during wartime.
"Mr Grant Murray, who was curator at the time, gave my father four prints of his work as a “token of appreciation.”
As well as overseeing 250 exhibitions and taking responsibility for thousands of irreplaceable works of art, Thomas, who died in 1959, aged 77, also sat for the Swansea artist Walter Fuller. The result, now with Iris's son, is still disliked by the entire family.
"The eyes seem to follow you around the room," said Iris. "It's rather sinister. And, anyway, dad was a good-looking man, not the surly figure in the portrait."
You can judge for yourself because the painting of Thomas Knibb is included here.
More: Your Memories >
Thomas Knibbs - "Dad was not surly" said Iris.
Walter Fuller's portrait of Thomas Knibbs. The family dislike it because the eyes follow the viewer around the room.
The panels painted by Sir Frank Brangwyn an artist whom Iris had met as a visitor to the gallery had to be removed from the Guildhall.
"Dad had to store them in sealed tubes in the shaft leading to the sewers at Mumbles Head," she said.
"Lots of other treasures were also put there for safety and dad would go regularly to check up on them.
Nothing was ever broken.
"Night after night he'd be up on the roof of the gallery and I reckon he saved the building from going up in flames.
"It was hit by 25 incendiaries, but he and the air raid wardens always managed to put them out.
Iris David
Lisa Ingram and her nanna Iris David . Photo: Lisa.
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