- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
- Date
- 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper, on an original washline mount
- Dimensions
- 27.7 × 40 cm, 10 ⅞ × 15 ¾ in
- Inscription
‘Girtin 1799’ lower left, by Thomas Girtin
- Object Type
- Samuel William Reynolds: Dealer; Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Hills and Mountains; North Wales
-
- Collection
- Versions
-
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
(TG1327)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1328
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2000 and 2002
Provenance
Samuel William Reynolds (1773–1835) (1803 list of works disposed of: 'View in Wales' sold with four others for £50); bought by Elizabeth Weddell (née Ramsden) (1749–1831), December 1801; bequeathed to John Charles Ramsden (1788–1836); then by descent to Phyllida Gordon-Duff-Pennington (née Pennington-Ramsden, 1929–2011); Sotheby’s, 11 April 1991, lot 68 as 'View of Mynnydd Mawr, North Wales', unsold; C. Thomas Toppin to 1997; Spink-Leger Pictures; Christie’s, 11 June 2003, lot 1, £106,050; Lowell Libson Ltd.
Exhibition History
Spink-Leger, London, 2000, no.25; London, 2002, no.119 as ’Mynnydd Mawr, North Wales’
Bibliography
Bauer, 1998, p.68; Libson, 2007, pp.58–59
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
Footnotes
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About this Work
This fine watercolour showing the view towards Mynydd Mawr (Big or Elephant Mountain) is based on an on-the-spot colour sketch that Girtin produced on his tour of North Wales in 1798 (TG1327). The sketch, which until recently went under various inaccurate or vague titles, has recently been identified as showing the Pont Seiont (Seiont Bridge), on the road leading out of Caernarfon on the way to Beddgelert, with Mynydd Mawr in the distance. Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak thought that it was produced on a putative later tour, but the emergence of this watercolour with an inscribed date of 1799 has helped to establish that all of the Welsh sketches were made on Girtin’s visit in 1798, and indeed that this was his only trip to the country. It is not surprising that the identity of the location of the scene should have remained uncertain for so long, because Mynydd Mawr neither was popular with fellow artists nor featured regularly in the accounts of tourists to the region, and the work itself was known simply as ‘View in Wales’ during Girtin’s lifetime when it was engraved in mezzotint (see print after TG1328). Moreover, as with many of the other landscapes that were produced following the 1798 tour, Girtin did not include any local colour or incident that might indicate that this a Welsh scene. The foreground is thus left almost as bare as the sketch, whilst the figures on the bridge are too small to be individualised. As with A View of Hills and a River (TG1336) and The Ogwen Falls (TG1330), which have been wrongly titled as Yorkshire and Lake District scenes respectively, this is first and foremost a landscape of natural effects, rather than a representation of a country with its own history, culture and language.
Girtin used his sketches from the tour to complete a number of large-scale works that were produced on commission for various patrons, in particular Edward Lascelles (1764–1814) (such as TG1330 and TG1322). This smaller dated work was produced in altogether different circumstances, however, for it is documented as first having been in the possession of Girtin’s representative, Samuel William Reynolds (1773–1835), who acted somewhere between an agent and a dealer at this date, and is recorded as selling it to Elizabeth Weddell (1749–1831), along with four other watercolours, for £50 in December 1801 (the others being TG1724, TG1725, TG1734 and TG1736) (Reynolds, Letter, 1803).1 This was shortly after the artist’s departure for France, which Reynolds thought would make his stock of twenty-nine ‘drawings by Girtin … much more Valuable’ (Reynolds, Letter, 1801).2 The view of Mynydd Mawr is therefore of considerable importance, in addition to its not insignificant aesthetic merits, as evidence, firstly, of the activities of a major female collector of the artist’s work and, secondly, of Girtin’s move away from a dependence on the support of patrons. The presence of this dated view in a list of works sold by Reynolds suggests that his working relationship with Girtin began as early as 1799 and that, from this point on, the artist produced a large group of watercolours, ‘Large size’ and ‘smaller’, for his representative to sell. Hitherto, Girtin had only very occasionally dated his works, and so the ‘1799’ added to this work and Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd (TG1302), which also appears to have passed through Reynolds’ hands, marks this and the more than thirty watercolours dated 1800 out as a new type of commodity that required a date to prove to potential customers that they were not buying old, unsold stock.
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). The paper has a similar furnish to the support used for one of Girtin’s most important on-the-spot colour sketches from his Welsh tour, A Mountain View, near Beddgelert (TG1321), but it was made from a different mould. The work is mounted on a later, nineteenth-century board.
(?) 1798
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
TG1327
1799
Pont Seiont, Looking towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
TG1328
(?) 1798
A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
TG1336
1798 - 1799
The Ogwen Falls
TG1330
1798 - 1799
The Ogwen Falls
TG1330
1798 - 1799
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
TG1322
1800 - 1801
Jedburgh Abbey, from the South East
TG1724
1800
The Village of Jedburgh
TG1725
(?) 1800
Lydford Castle, from the River Lyd
TG1734
(?) 1800
On the River Taw, North Devon, Looking from Braunton Marsh towards Instow and Appledore
TG1736
1799
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
TG1302
(?) 1798
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
TG1321