Nina M. Davies

Nina M. Davies (1881-1965) was a British artist and Egyptologist who devoted her career to making meticulous copies of ancient Egyptian tomb paintings. Born Nina de Garis Cummings, she married the renowned Egyptologist Norman de Garis Davies, and together they spent decades documenting the painted decoration of tombs in the Theban necropolis at Luxor.

Davies's copies of Egyptian wall paintings are remarkable for their accuracy, sensitivity, and artistic quality, preserving in faithful detail many paintings that have since deteriorated or been damaged. She worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Egyptian Expedition and the Egypt Exploration Society, producing hundreds of watercolor facsimiles that remain essential documents for Egyptological research. Her copies capture not only the iconographic content but also the subtle color harmonies and painting techniques of the ancient artists. She published extensively on Egyptian painting, including the important volume "Ancient Egyptian Painting" (1936). Her work is held by the Metropolitan Museum and other major institutions.

Nina M. Davies was not a painter in the conventional sense but rather a scholarly artist whose medium was the faithful reproduction of ancient Egyptian wall paintings from the Theban necropolis. Her watercolor facsimiles are remarkable for their dual character: they are simultaneously rigorous documents of archaeological record and works of considerable artistic quality in their own right. Her copies capture the flat, conceptual drawing system of ancient Egyptian painting — hierarchical scale, combined profile and frontal views, the precise organization of figures within registers — with scholarly accuracy while also conveying the subtle color harmonies and surface qualities of the originals, which deteriorate irreversibly under the conditions of exposure.

Working primarily for the Metropolitan Museum's Egyptian Expedition from the 1920s through the 1950s, Davies developed an extraordinary technical skill in matching pigments to the originals and rendering the aged, sometimes damaged surfaces of ancient paintings with both fidelity and sensitivity. Her copies are not mechanical reproductions but interpretive documents that required deep understanding of both Egyptian painting conventions and the technical materials of the originals. Her published compendium Ancient Egyptian Painting (1936) remains a foundational reference work that demonstrates both her scholarship and her artistic achievement.

Nina M. Davies occupies a unique position at the intersection of art and scholarship, producing a body of facsimile copies that constitutes one of the most important documentary records of ancient Egyptian painting in existence. Many of the Theban tomb paintings she copied have since deteriorated significantly or been damaged, making her reproductions invaluable primary sources for scholars of Egyptian art. Her career also represents a significant chapter in the history of women in Egyptology and art history, demonstrating the remarkable contribution of women scholars to the documentation of ancient art during the interwar period. Her 58 surviving works at the Metropolitan Museum are irreplaceable records of a vanishing heritage.