Walter David Jones CH (known as
David Jones, 1 November 1895 – 28 October 1974) was both a painter and one of the first-generation
British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolour, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was considered by
T. S. Eliot to be of major importance, and his
The Anathemata was considered by
W. H. Auden to be the best long poem written in
English in the twentieth century. His Christian beliefs and Welsh heritage helped form his work.