- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
- Date
- (?) 1798
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 15.7 × 26.4 cm, 6 ⅛ × 10 ⅜ in
- Object Type
- On-the-spot Colour Sketch
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; North Wales
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1337
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 357 as 'Denbigh Castle'; '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.66; London, 1985, no.81a; London, 2002, no.122 as ’Denbigh Castle, North Wales’; Beijing, 2007, no.1.39
Bibliography
Binyon, 1898–1907, no.2; Davies, 1924, pl.65 as 'A View near Denbigh'; Mayne, 1949, p.93; Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.40; Lyles, 1984, pp.6–7
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, looking past the ruins of Denbigh Castle to the Vale of Clywd, was made on Girtin’s visit to North Wales in the summer of 1798. His two earlier views of the castle ruins were made after a drawing by his early patron James Moore (1762–99) (TG0133 and TG0161), and they concentrate on the thirteenth-century gatehouse built for Edward I (1239–1307). However, when he came to visit the site in person in 1798, Girtin turned away from the ruins to look out over ‘the rich and Luxurious Vale of Clwyd’, minimising any interest that the subject might have held for antiquarians such as Moore, as the few remaining signs of the ruins are barely differentiated from their rocky foundations (Porter, 1799, f.99). During the latter part of his career, the artist often adopted unusual viewpoints when visiting popular tourist sites or architectural monuments, but in this case he may simply have reflected a wider dissatisfaction with the fragmentary ruins of the castle at Denbigh as a picturesque object, certainly in comparison with the fertile valley beyond. Joseph Hucks (1772–1800), for instance, noted that they did not stir a suitable ‘mournful … melancholy’, and he had to return in moonlight to make the experience memorable (Hucks, 1795, p.44), whilst John Byng, 5th Viscount Torrington (1743–1813), also concentrated on ‘the noble views over the vale’ from the hill (Torrington, Diaries, vol.1, p.172).
Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak dated the sketch to 1800 and a second, putative visit to Wales, on the grounds that colour studies such as this were ‘too advanced in style to have been done in 1798’ (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, pp.40 and 183). The realisation that the very comparable colour sketch of Mynydd Mawr (TG1327) must have been painted in 1798, following the discovery of a dated finished version (TG1328), has surely put an end to such speculation about a second trip, though the idea that this work is marked by a greater sophistication still has some merit. This is certainly one of Girtin’s most complex on-the-spot sketches, with as many as ten different tones employed by the artist. In places the washes have been superimposed up to three times, and on each occasion Girtin would have had to wait for the drawing to dry before continuing to work on that area. Still, there are plenty of signs that the sketch was made on the spot, including a fingerprint left by the artist in the lower centre, and the clouds, in particular, are worked with Girtin’s customary urgency, as he strove to keep up with the fast-changing effect of a broken sky partially illuminating the landscape below. This was not the last part of the work to be completed, however. An area of foliage to the left shows the blue of the sky showing through, and it was therefore clearly added later. How much later is impossible to determine, but, as with the similarly carefully worked sketch A Bridge over the Glaslyn, near Beddgelert (TG1325), there is a possibility that Girtin added further touches in the studio, presumably to make the work a more saleable commodity.
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 and worked by the artist on his favoured wireside, where the surface is impressed with the lines of the mould used in its manufacture (Smith, 2002b, p.158; Bower, Report). This is the same paper that Girtin used for the view of Mynydd Mawr (another Welsh view coloured on the spot) 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.
1792 - 1793
The Gatehouse, Denbigh Castle
TG0133
1793 - 1794
The Gatehouse, Denbigh Castle
TG0161
(?) 1798
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
TG1327
1799
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
TG1328
(?) 1798
A Bridge over the Glaslyn, near Beddgelert
TG1325
(?) 1798
A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
TG1336