- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
- Date
- (?) 1798
- Medium and Support
- Watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 14.9 × 25.6 cm, 5 ⅞ × 10 ⅛ in
- Object Type
- On-the-spot Colour Sketch
- Subject Terms
- Hills and Mountains; North Wales
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1336
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 444 as '"View of Hills and River" (possibly in the Wharfe Valley)'; '1801'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001, 2002 and 2018
Provenance
Chambers Hall (1786–1855); presented to the Museum, 1855
Exhibition History
Manchester, 1975, no.90 as ’Hills and Stream’; London, 1985, no.81b; London, 2002, no.124 as ’View of Hills and River’; Rome, 2014, no.71 as ’Views of the Hills of Snowdonia (?)’
Bibliography
Binyon, 1898–1907, no.4 as 'Hills and Stream'; Mayne, 1949, p.93; Williams, 1952, p.107; Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.83; Lemaître, 1955, pl.2
Place depicted
Other entries in The 1798 Welsh Tour:
Sketches and Subsequent Watercolours
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Tate, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Private Collection, North Wales
Caernarfon: A Street Scene with Plas Mawr
Tate, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
British Museum, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
British Museum, London
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
A Bridge over the Glaslyn, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
Private Collection
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake), Looking towards Cadair Idris
Private Collection
A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
British Museum, London
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
British Museum, London
An Unidentified Landscape, Possibly the Vale of Clwyd
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Valle Crucis Abbey: From the Cloister Looking Towards the Dormitory
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey: The Chapter House, from the South West
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A River Scene, Probably the Dee near Corwen
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
The Cloisters of Chester Cathedral
Private Collection
The Red Castle, from Hawk Lake, with a Distant View of Shrewsbury
Private Collection
Wroxeter: The Roman Wall
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
The Old Severn Bridge at Bridgnorth
British Museum, London
Hereford Cathedral, from across the River Wye
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
An Unidentified Valley, Probably in North Wales
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Cadair Idris, from the Estuary near Barmouth
Private Collection
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About this Work
This fine on-the-spot colour sketch was probably painted in North Wales on Girtin’s visit to the region in 1798, though the precise location is yet to be identified. Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak thought that it was a Yorkshire view dating from 1801, and they suggested that it might show the river Wharfe (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.195). However, as the paper historian Peter Bower has noted, it is painted on the same distinctive buff-grey laid wrapping paper made by an unknown English manufacturer that Girtin used for two other on-the-spot sketches of Welsh subjects, Denbigh Castle (TG1337) and Mynydd Mawr (TG1327) (Smith, 2002b, p.160; Bower, Report). These can be confidently dated to 1798 since the latter was used as the basis for a studio watercolour that is dated 1799, and there is consequently little doubt that this work too was sketched earlier than the date proposed by Girtin and Loshak. Even without this technical information, and despite the continuing uncertainty about the view’s subject, the links between this sketch and other Welsh scenes point conclusively to the fact that it too was painted on the 1798 tour. The broad, flat wash of colour in the foreground with blots caused by excess water, as seen in A Mountain View, near Beddgelert (TG1321); the almost abstract field patterns receding into the distance, which also feature in the Denbigh Castle view; and, above all, the fluid and rapid execution of the sky as the artist struggled to capture the changing effect of scattered clouds, as observed in the Mynydd Mawr scene, all have their close equivalents in this sketch of an unknown view. Moreover, the way that a break in the stormy sky has lit up the near hill whilst plunging the more distant mountain into deep gloom is particularly characteristic of Girtin’s on-the-spot colour studies from the 1798 tour, which collectively demonstrate an awareness of the way that accidents of light, in this case the result of a passing storm, can transform a landscape. Painting swiftly, and on a small scale with just a few tones, Girtin had the technical ability to capture much of this with a fidelity that still excites and surprises, and, though Girtin and Loshak may have got the date of the work wrong, they were surely right to conclude that this is ‘perhaps the most powerful of all Girtin’s on-the-spot water-colours’ (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.83).
Efforts to identify the location of the work have concentrated on two areas. In the 2002 catalogue to the bicentenary exhibition, I suggested that it might show the same valley of the river Clywd seen in the background of the view of Denbigh Castle, and there are indeed parallels with the scenery in a location that Girtin definitely sketched in 1798 (Smith, 2002b, p.160). More recently, the British Museum has looked at the possibility that the sketch shows a view from near Porthmadog, ‘with the River Mawddach in the foreground and the Snowdonia mountains in the background, including Moel Siabod (the blue mountain on the left)’ (British Museum, Collection, 1855,0214.12). This again looks quite plausible, and it has the added attraction of fitting in with Girtin’s itinerary, as we know that he visited and sketched the nearby Cain Falls (TG1319). However, the fact that the new identification is plausible, rather than definitive, is perhaps the point, because in the end it is actually the lack of topographical specificity that is the key characteristic of the artist’s later works, and the true subject of this sketch, a weather effect and a landscape transformed by light, is fully recognisable even if the location is not.
(?) 1798
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
TG1337
(?) 1798
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
TG1327
(?) 1798
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
TG1321
(?) 1798
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
TG1319