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Works (?) Edward Dayes

Pont Aberglaslyn

1795 - 1796

Primary Image: TG0918: (?) Edward Dayes (1763–1804), Pont Aberglaslyn, 1795–96, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, 24.1 × 36.8 cm, 9 ½ × 14 ¼ in. Private Collection.

Photo courtesy of Lowell Libson Ltd.

Description
Creator(s)
(?) Edward Dayes (1763-1804)
Title
  • Pont Aberglaslyn
Date
1795 - 1796
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
Dimensions
24.1 × 36.8 cm, 9 ½ × 14 ¼ in
Object Type
Studio Watercolour
Subject Terms
Hills and Mountains; North Wales; River Scenery

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0918
Description Source(s)
Viewed in 2014

Provenance

Albany Gallery, London; Christie’s, 8 April 1997, lot 42, as by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin, £4,370; Sir Edwin Alfred Grenville Manton (1909–2005); Skinner’s, Boston, 12 September 2008, lot 428 as after Edward Dayes; Lowell Libson Ltd

Exhibition History

Lowell Libson, 2014, no.10 as by Edward Dayes

Bibliography

Wilton, 2001, p.97 as '?After Edward Dayes'

About this Work

Pont Aberglaslyn, North Wales

This view of the medieval bridge on the edge of the tidal estuary of Traeth Mawr, in North Wales, the Pont Aberglaslyn, was for a period after its appearance on the art market in 1997 attributed jointly to Girtin and his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) (Exhibitions: Christie’s, 8 April 1997, lot 42). The attribution was made on the assumption that the work had been copied from a composition by Edward Dayes (1763–1804), having been produced at the house of the artists’ patron Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), who employed them to produce ‘finished drawings’ from ‘the outlines or unfinished drawings’ of primarily John Robert Cozens (1752–97), but also Girtin’s master, Dayes (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).1 The attribution of the work has since been returned to Dayes, something I am entirely in agreement with, as neither the colouring nor the pencil work bear any close relation to Girtin or Turner’s practice and, more particularly, the work does not display any signs that it was produced as a result of the two artists working together. Nonetheless, it is still of some significance, illustrating as it does just how close Girtin and Turner got to Dayes’ style in the mass of works they produced for Monro in the years between 1794 and 1797, and not just in those compositions that they copied from the older artist.

Dayes produced another slightly larger version of his view of the Pont Aberglaslyn, south of Beddgelert (see figure 1), though this has never been attributed to any other artist.

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

Footnotes

  1. 1 The full diary entry, giving crucial details of the artists’ work at Monro’s house, is transcribed in the Documents section of the Archive (1798 – Item 2).

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