David Davies began studying art at the School of Mines and Industries in his birthplace, Ballarat. Having joined the 'Buonarotti Club' of now-famous Victorian artists in 1885, from 1887 to 1890 he studied at the NGV School. In the late 1880s he painted often at Eaglemont with Tom Roberts, Charles Conder, Arthur Streeton and Walter Withers. Davies left Australia in 1890 to study at the Académie Julian in Paris; later, he and his artist wife, Janet, went to live at St Ives, Cornwall, where he set about capturing atmospheric effects en plein air. When they returned to settle at Templestowe, Victoria in 1893 he began working on paintings in the dusk and early evening; his best-known work, Moonrise 1893 dates from this phase of his life. The family returned to England in 1897, and henceforth they moved intermittently from England to France and back again. Having been away from Australia for more than forty years, Davies died five days before his wife in Cornwall. A show in Melbourne in 1926 is thought to have been his only solo exhibition in Australia during his lifetime.
