- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and scratching out on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 20.2 × 33.3 cm, 8 × 13 ¼ in
- Inscription
‘Girtin’ on the back
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour; Visible Fold in the Paper
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; North Wales; River Scenery
Provenance
Magdalen Colville (1878–1965); her sale, Sotheby’s, 12 December 1945, lot 22 as 'Chepstow'; bought by Paul Oppé (1878–1957), £6; then by descent; bought by Tate as part of the Oppé Collection with assistance from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund, 1996
Exhibition History
London, 1958a, no.156; Lichfield, 1987, no.15
Bibliography
Oppé, 1957–59, p.98, no.2302; Rosenthal and Lyles, 2013, pp.30–31
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 view of the thirteenth-century castle built for Edward I (1239–1307) at Rhuddlan, seen from the river Clwyd, is the smallest of three versions of a composition that resulted from Girtin’s tour of North Wales in 1798. One of the watercolours is dated 1799 (TG1302), whilst the other may be the on-the-spot colour sketch (TG1301), though its poor, faded condition makes this difficult to substantiate. This work too is badly faded, so that the dramatic broken sky, which lights up the castle in a characteristic fashion, has all but been lost, whilst the reflections in the water in the foreground lack the subtle patterns that typically anchor Girtin’s compositions. This is a great pity, because the artist’s adopted position downriver produced a powerful symmetrical composition of stark simplicity, with the double tower of the castle’s eastern gatehouse aligning vertically with the two arches of the bridge. However, what Lorenz Eitner has termed the ‘nakedness of the terrain and the wide sweep of its vacant space’, reminiscent of the ‘sense of romantic solitude’ found in the landscapes of John Robert Cozens (1752–97), may actually have been enhanced by the way the work has effectively been reduced to broad areas of monochrome (Eitner and others, 1993, p.108). The mood is enhanced by the artist’s decision to exclude the church of St Mary’s which in a sketch by Girtin’s contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), made a month or so later (Tate, Turner Bequest XXXIX 43), helps to create a different, more sociable context for the ruins.
Looking around for other Welsh views that have not faded and that might therefore give an idea of the watercolour’s original appearance, I was struck by the fact that, unlike the more overtly architectural views, there are very few landscapes that have not suffered a similar fate to the three Rhuddlan Castle scenes. Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (TG1328) indicates how the greens would have looked, but even here the greys in the sky have lost their depth. The partial fading of this watercolour suggests that it was the use of a fugitive pigment, presumably indigo, rather than excessive exposure to light that caused the problem. I suspect, therefore, that so many of the Welsh landscapes have suffered because the artist felt that the subtle range of effects he observed in the field required the use in the studio of fugitive pigments such as indigo for blue and gamboge for yellow, both as thin glazes and mixed with other colours, and that the corruption of just a few of these has consequently caused grievous damage. It is a sobering thought, therefore, that whilst in this case something of the grandeur of the original may remain, in general, it is the most faded of Girtin’s works that originally would have depicted the most subtle effects.
A similar watercolour known as View in Cumberland (see figure 1) is inscribed ‘T. Girtin 1801’ on the back. The work, which is not by Girtin, repeats elements of the Rhuddlan composition, including the way the double-arched bridge aligns with the bank behind, whilst the form of the hills in the distance seems to be based on Girtin’s view. However, the form of the castle has been changed, and the composition has been extended to the left with the addition of a framing device of trees. The work therefore appears to be a weak variation of the composition, perhaps by the same unknown amateur artist who was responsible for a similarly sized watercolour based on Girtin’s A Mill in Essex (see TG1416 figure 1), from the same private collection.
1799
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
TG1302
(?) 1798
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
TG1301
1799
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
TG1328