- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Caernarfon: A Street Scene with Plas Mawr
- Date
- (?) 1798
- Medium and Support
- Graphite on laid paper (watermark: horn in escutcheon; GR)
- Dimensions
- 18.4 × 23.5 cm, 7 ¼ × 9 ¼ in
- Inscription
‘House at Caernarvon’ on the back, by Thomas Girtin
- Object Type
- Outline Drawing
- Subject Terms
- North Wales; The Country Town
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1313
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 265 as 'House at Caernarvon'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001 and 2018
Provenance
Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833); his posthumous sale, Christie's, 26–28 June and 1–2 July 1833 (day and lot number not known); bought by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851); accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856
Bibliography
Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1240 as 'House at Caernarvon'; Tate Online as 'A Street in Conway, with Plas Mawr' (Accessed 16/09/2022)
Place depicted
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About this Work
This sketch of a street scene in Caernarfon, with the now demolished Elizabethan town house of Plas Mawr (The Great House) and the castle in the distance, was drawn by Girtin on his tour of North Wales in the summer of 1798. The building has been incorrectly identified as showing the similarly named house in Conwy, but Girtin’s inscription on the back, which reads ‘House at Caernarvon’, is correct, and the subject’s identity can be confirmed by a number of depictions of the picturesque building that were made at roughly the same time, including a comparable watercolour by John Buckler (1770–1851) (see figure 1).
As with another view of Caernarfon, showing the castle looking west to the Queen’s Tower (TG1308), this drawing was bought at the posthumous sale of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833) by Girtin’s contemporary and collaborator Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), and it is now part of the Turner Bequest at Tate Britain. Other outline drawings that came from Monro’s collection, including the Caernarfon views and The Market Square at Aylesbury (TG0369a), all of which postdate the co-commissions with Turner, suggest that the patron continued to acquire Girtin’s drawings, and, specifically, examples of the pencil sketches that he produced on his tours. These, I suspect, were bought as much as examples of the artist’s skill as a draughtsman as for their picturesque and antiquarian subjects.
(?) 1798
Caernarfon Castle, from the East
TG1308
1798 - 1799
The Market Square at Aylesbury
TG0369a