(La Trobe Collection, State Library of Victoria)

1864 – 1939

David Davies, the son of a miner, was born in Ballarat on the 21st May, 1864. He studied art at the Ballarat School of Mines, the National Gallery School, Melbourne and the Academie Julien, Paris in 1891.

In 1893, after a brief stay in Cornwall, he returned to Australia with his wife Janet and settled in Templestowe, close to the Eaglemont Estate owned by his brother-in-law Charles and the site of the Heidelberg School camp between 1888-1890. In 1890 Walter Withers founded an artists' colony nearby in a farmhouse at Charterisville in Heidelberg and artists and their students came and went. Davies was a frequent visitor, painting his 'Moonrise Series' in this area.

Davies returned to Cornwall in 1896 where he lived at St. Ives with his wife and two children for the next twelve years. In 1908 he moved to France for health reasons but returned to Cornwall in 1932. He died at Looe, Cornwall on the 25th March, 1939.

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