- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Flint Castle
- Date
- (?) 1798
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; North Wales
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1363
- Description Source(s)
- The original known only from the print
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 sketch by Girtin of Flint Castle is known only from a hand-coloured engraving that was published in 1820 (see the print after, above). It was one of two Girtin drawings engraved for the second edition of The Northern Cambrian Mountains; or, A Tour through North Wales by Thomas Compton (unknown dates) and the print notes that ‘the sketch’ was worked up by Samuel Prout (1783–1852), who presumably added the striking seascape to an outline drawing of the castle’s north-east tower, which, before the Dee estuary silted up, washed against its walls (Compton, 1820, pl.35). A pen and ink drawing that Girtin made from a sketch by his earliest patron, James Moore (1762–99) (TG0281), shows the same tower, but it was taken from a different viewpoint and it could not have been the drawing used by Prout. It is possible that Girtin made another outline drawing from a different view by Moore, but equally he may have sketched a view of Flint on his own visit to North Wales in 1798. No drawings survive to document a visit to the site, but the artist made sketches at the nearby Hawarden Castle (TG1350) and Holywell (TG1300), and, given that the image of the tower is truer in its proportions than the exaggerated form shown in Girtin’s copy of Moore’s drawing, this is the more likely scenario here. One thing is for certain, though. Girtin’s lost sketch of the tower would have been a simple outline drawing lacking any weather effect, which would have been improvised during the production of a studio watercolour.
Another view of Flint Castle (see figure 1), which until recently was attributed to Girtin, is actually a copy by John Henderson (1764–1843) of a print titled Scene on the French Coast from the collection of prints known as the Liber Studiorum based on the works of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), which was published in 1807 (Forrester, 1996, p.50).
1795 - 1796
Flint Castle
TG0281
(?) 1798
Hawarden Castle
TG1350
(?) 1798
St Winefride’s Well, Holywell
TG1300