- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Harlech Castle
- Date
- (?) 1798
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 37 × 53.8 cm, 14 ½ × 21 ⅛ in
- Inscription
‘Harlech Castle, Girtin’ on the back, by an unknown hand, in pencil
- Object Type
- On-the-spot Colour Sketch; Visible Fold in the Paper
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; North Wales
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1318
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 267 as 'Harlech Castle, Merionethshire'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001
Provenance
Herbert Horne (1864–1916); bought from him by Sir Edward Marsh (1872–1953), May 1904 (lent to London, 1916); bequeathed through the National Art-Collections Fund (The Art Fund), 1953
Exhibition History
London, 1916, no.105; Tokyo, 1929, no.77
Bibliography
Hassall, 1959, p.112
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 large and largely unresolved sketch of a silhouetted Harlech Castle seen from below is so badly faded that Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak described it as an ‘Unfinished’ monochrome wash drawing (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.267). They dated it to 1798, but I am not clear whether they thought that the work was done on the spot during Girtin’s tour of North Wales in that year or whether it was left abandoned later in the studio, though, given the work’s poor condition, a certain amount of ambiguity about its status is understandable. On balance, I think the work is by Girtin and that it was indeed painted on the spot in 1798. The majority of Girtin’s colour sketches from the tour may have been worked on smaller sheets, but a number are on the same larger scale as the artist’s commissioned studio watercolours, and these include an even bigger study, The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau (TG1319), which seems to have been produced on the same leg of the tour, as he travelled south from Snowdonia. Another useful comparison might be made with the large sketch A Distant View of Conwy Castle (TG1307), seen under a lowering sky, which, as here, seems to have been interrupted when the ruins had barely been established by a single wash of colour. The sky in the Harlech sketch has suffered particularly badly, presumably because of the artist’s use of indigo for the darker greys of the clouds, but it probably originally matched the dramatic effect of the rain shower in the Conwy view. Girtin therefore seems to have made a colour sketch, rather than a simple pencil outline, when a subject likely to attract an order was either encountered in a suitable light or accompanied by an appropriate weather effect. The resulting sketches would then both help in the production of a finished watercolour and provide a useful guide to prospective clients, who would get a better idea of what their purchase might look like, though no commission was forthcoming for this dramatic view of Harlech.
Girtin’s contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) travelled to North Wales in the same year, and he sketched a similar view of Harlech Castle and town seen from the north (see figure 1). According to Joseph Farington (1747–1821), Turner travelled to ‘South & North Wales this Summer’, and he told the diarist that he was ‘alone and on Horseback – out 7 weeks’. Given that the artist was not reported to be back in London until late September, it is clear that although Turner sketched many of the same subjects as Girtin, they did so independently, with the former’s visit to Harlech taking place a month or so later. The weather, Turner noted, included ‘much rain’, but this was ‘better for effects’, as Girtin’s sketch attests (Farington, Diary, 26 September 1798). A year later, two of Girtin’s colleagues from the Sketching Society, Thomas Richard Underwood (1772–1836) and Robert Ker Porter (1777–1842), undertook a similar tour, which the latter recorded in a highly entertaining journal. In contrast to Turner’s trip, theirs was a rather more sociable affair, recalled in a light-hearted way and where Harlech Castle, on ‘a high rocky promontory’, was described as ‘an Ancient and Splendid Radcliffian erection’ (Porter, 1799, f.39). The reference is to the Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823), whose The Mysteries of Udolpho was chosen by Underwood as the subject for a later meeting of the Sketching Society. Girtin’s sketch of Harlech Castle is far too big to have been the product of one of the group’s meetings, but nonetheless there is still something of a fantastical element to the composition, redolent of a work from the imagination.
(?) 1798
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
TG1319
(?) 1798
A Distant View of Conwy Castle
TG1307