Through the ‘Tell us about lost work’ form, a former international rugby player has brought to Scene & Word’s attention a sculpture by Jonah Jones that had been long forgotten.
John Willcox was a pupil at Ratcliffe College, Leicestershire, in 1948–54. In 1959 Jonah received his biggest commission from Ratcliffe College. He was asked to fill a whole new chapel, as well as other parts of the school, with all kinds of art: “altar, organ grilles, candlesticks, statues, stained glass, all sorts of things,” as he later put it in Welsh Artists Talking (Editor: Tony Curtis. Seren Books, Bridgend, 2000).
Willcox was a full-back, who played for England from1961–64, serving also as captain. His club was Harlequins and he also played three times on the British Lions tour to South Africa in 1962. After retiring as a player, he worked for a long time as a rugby teacher and coach at Ampleforth College, where he coached Lawrence Dallaglio (England) and the brothers Simon and Guy Easterby (both Ireland).
The sculpture shows a rugby player tackling another player. It was probably commissioned by Father Claude Leetham, headmaster of Ratcliffe from 1948–62. Willcox remembers giving the school an England rugby shirt in 1962, and he believes that in response Leetham presented the statue. However, Peter Jones, Jonah’s biographer, thinks the work was carved later than 1962: “I think it was created in 1963–64. Jonah was very busy throughout the 1960s, and it seems he carved the piece very quickly (he was a fast worker anyway) in order to satisfy Claude Leetham – as is clear from the style and finish of the work… However, this treatment is very effective in a piece that captures speed and movement, frozen in a blink of time.”
Photograph by John Willcox
Another lost piece by Jonah came to light a few weeks earlier when John Peredur Hughes contacted Scene & Word: a fine watercolour of Moel-y-Gest from Ystumllyn, on the western outskirts of Pentrefelin, where the Jones family lived from 1951–66. As a child, John Peredur lived next door to the family. The picture was painted in 1954.
Photograph by John Peredur Hughes