- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
- Date
- (?) 1798
- Medium and Support
- Watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 15 × 23.4 cm, 5 ⅞ × 9 ¼ in
- Object Type
- On-the-spot Colour Sketch
- Subject Terms
- Hills and Mountains; North Wales
-
- Collection
- Versions
-
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
(TG1328)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1327
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 363 as 'Called Beddgelert (probably Cader Idris)'; 'Out-of-door sketch'; '1800'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001, 2002 and 2018
Provenance
Chambers Hall (1786–1855); presented to the Museum, 1855
Exhibition History
Manchester, 1975, no.68 as ’Mountainous Landscape with River and Bridge’; London, 1985, no.80c as ’Landscape with Hill and Cloud’; Cleveland, 1991, no.37 as ’Landscape with Hills and Clouds: Mynydd Mawr’; London, 2002, no.118 as ’Mynnydd Mawr, North Wales’
Bibliography
Binyon, 1898–1907, no.7 as 'Landscape with Hill and Cloud'; Mayne, 1949, p.93; Kriz, 1997, pp.25–26; Chare, 2007, pp.20–22
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 on-the-spot colour sketch, which until recently went under various inaccurate or vague titles, has been identified as showing Pont Seiont (Seiont Bridge) on the road leading out of Caernarfon on the way to Beddgelert, with Mynydd Mawr (Big or Elephant Mountain) in the distance. Girtin produced a studio watercolour from the sketch that he dated 1799 (TG1328), thereby proving that this on-the-spot sketch was made on the artist’s 1798 trip to North Wales. The studio watercolour was unknown to Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak, who consequently dated what they thought was an ‘Out-of-door sketch’ of Cadair Idris to 1800 (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.183). In other words, this was one of a number of sketches made in Wales, including the view of Denbigh Castle (TG1337), that the authors of the catalogue of Girtin’s watercolours thought were ‘too advanced in style to have been done in 1798’, and that they therefore thought ‘support the hypothesis of a second visit in 1800’ (p.40). This sketch of the view to Mynydd Mawr is consequently of some significance in helping to disprove the frankly fanciful idea of a second Welsh trip. The stylistic, material and subject links between a study that must have been produced in 1798 and the ten or so other on-the-spot colour studies identified here as Welsh views are so significant, I suggest, that it is inconceivable that they were not all produced at the same time, and on what was surely Girtin’s sole tour to the area.
Even though Girtin did not inscribe and date his sketch, as was commonly the case with other artists, the evidence that this watercolour was painted on the spot is compelling. Thus, as with A Mountain View, near Beddgelert (TG1321), it employs a limited range of tones, the foreground and other areas are left unfinished, and again there is evidence of water spillage – one large drop disfigures the sky. Above all, it is the evident dispatch with which Girtin worked that confirms the work’s status as an on-the-spot sketch, and this is particularly the case in the sky, where the clouds were washed in rapidly as the artist sought to capture the effect of a break in the sky illuminating part of the landscape below. It seems that Girtin was encouraged to make a colour sketch, rather than a simple pencil outline, when he encountered a potentially profitable subject either seen in a suitable light or accompanied by an appropriate weather effect. The resulting sketch would then both help in the production of a finished watercolour and provide a useful guide to a prospective client, who would get an idea of what their purchase might look like.
On a technical note, the paper historian Peter Bower has identified the support used by Girtin as a buff-grey laid wrapping paper made by an unknown English manufacturer, worked on the artist’s favoured wireside, where the surface is impressed with the lines of the mould used in its manufacture (Smith, 2002b, p.155; Bower, Report). This is the same paper that Girtin used for another Welsh view coloured on the spot, Denbigh Castle (TG1337), as well as the unidentified A View of Hills and a River (TG1336), which may consequently also be identified as showing a scene in North Wales.
1799
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
TG1328
(?) 1798
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
TG1337
(?) 1798
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
TG1321
(?) 1798
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
TG1337
(?) 1798
A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
TG1336