Early Life
Alfred George Janes was born on 30 June 1911, in the city centre of Swansea, South Wales, above his parents' fruit and flower shop in Castle Square. He attended the Bishop Gore School and then the Swansea School of Art and Crafts (now part of Swansea Metropolitan University). At the age of 16 he exhibited at the 1928 National Eisteddfod (held in Treorchy that year). Three years later, while he was still concentrating on still lifes and portraits, he was commissioned to paint a portrait of the mayor of Swansea, Arthur Lovell. In 1931 he painted a portrait of a 17-year-old Mervyn Levy, thought to have been the painting that won him a scholarship to study art at the Royal Academy Schools in London. At the Royal Academy Schools his drawing tutors included Tom Monnington, but he was also stimulated by the modernist works displayed in the commercial galleries of nearby Cork Street, and he did not complete his Academy course. While in London, he shared several flats in and around Chelsea with contemporaries; at first with William Scott, the Scots-Irish artist whom Janes met at the Royal Academy Schools.
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