- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 18.4 × 29.6 cm, 7 ¼ × 11 ⅝ in
- Part of
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; North Wales; River Scenery
-
- Collection
- Versions
-
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
(TG1316)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1315
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 290i as 'Caernarvon Castle'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001 and 2018
Provenance
Chambers Hall (1786–1855); presented to the Museum, 1855
Bibliography
Binyon, 1898–1907, no.5
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
Footnotes
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About this Work
This small watercolour is one of two versions of a composition that Girtin presumably sketched on his tour of North Wales in the summer of 1798 (the other being TG1316). The view from the river Seiont shows the south flank of Caernarfon Castle, with the Queen’s Tower to the right, and it therefore covers much the same extent of the building that is seen in the pencil drawing made at the same time (TG1308), though more of the estuary is visible as the view was taken from further away. The condition of the work has been adversely affected by fading, and the use of a low-grade wrapping paper has resulted in a large number of discoloured spots caused by impurities in the support, but this in itself is not enough to account for the disappointing impact it makes. This, I suspect, is very much down to the careless way in which the complex structure of the castle has been reduced to a far from imposing band of masonry in the centre of the composition, with little sense of recession and no indication of a coherent relationship with the rest of the building, though the poor quality of the drawing is not enough to show, as with the other version of the composition, that it was a copy by another hand. Rather, the watercolour’s modest scale, together with its perfunctory execution, suggests that we are looking at what contemporaries referred to as a ‘pot boiler’ – a work made for the fee and not to enhance professional reputation – and specifically that it was executed for the print trade. The fact that the print (combining etching and aquatint) of the subject was published only in 1883 (see the print after, above, Neill & Son, 1883) is quite misleading, therefore, since we know that Samuel William Reynolds (1773–1835), who worked as Girtin’s representative, acting somewhere between an agent and a dealer from around 1800, was also making prints after his works around this earlier date. Thus, the same document that established Reynolds’ close commercial relationship with Girtin has also revealed that he had ‘Plates from drawings by Girtin’ worth £60 in 1801, and it seems likely that he procured drawings such as this from the artist for the purpose of reproduction (Reynolds, Letter, 1801).1
Another watercolour of almost exactly the same view was painted by Girtin’s older contemporary William Sawrey Gilpin (1762–1843) (The Whitworth, Manchester (D.1893.13)), but an even more striking parallel exists with an on-the-spot colour sketch that appears to have been produced by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) on his visit to Caernarfon, also in the summer of 1798 (see figure 1). Indeed, for a long time the fact that the work was executed on a type of laid paper rarely used by Turner, combined with the employment of a palette that bore a resemblance to Girtin’s on-the-spot sketches, suggested to me not only that Turner had acquired one of his colleague’s drawings but also that it was the basis for this watercolour of Caernarfon. However, although Turner did indeed buy a number of Girtin’s sketches at the posthumous sale of their mutual patron Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), including a very similar view of Caernarfon Castle (TG1308), I now think that the material evidence for a Girtin attribution is outweighed by the differences between the colour sketch and the watercolour, which, on closer examination, can be seen to repeat the disposition of the boats in the other Girtin drawing of this view. The colour sketch, in contrast, was not only taken from closer to, producing an altogether more satisfactory compact profile for the castle, but also executed on a slightly later date, when only the boat under construction on the stocks remains in the same location depicted by Girtin. As the example of Gilpin’s view shows, there are only a few points from which the castle might be seen to best effect, and the fact that artists produced very similar scenes may simply be a matter of coincidence, therefore.
1798 - 1799
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
TG1316
(?) 1798
Caernarfon Castle, from the East
TG1308
(?) 1798
Caernarfon Castle, from the East
TG1308