- 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