- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and scratching out on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 37.6 × 52.1 cm, 14 ¾ × 20 ½ in
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Bridges and Weirs; North Wales; Waterfall Scenery
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1332
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 291i as 'Pont-y-Pair, Bettws-Y-Coed, Caernarvonshire'; '1798-9'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001 and 2002
Provenance
Walter Benjamin Tiffin (1795–1877); bought from him by George Wyndham Girtin (1836–1912), 16 August 1860, £12 (lent to London, 1875); then by descent to Thomas Girtin (1874–1960); sold to Walker's Galleries, London, 1918; bought by Herbert Powell (1863–1950), £142; entrusted to the National Art-Collections Fund, 1929; presented to the Tate Gallery, 1967
Exhibition History
London, 1875, no.18; Walker’s Galleries, 1918, no.45; National Art-Collections Fund Tour, 1947-, no.66; London, 2002, no.77
Bibliography
Hughes, 1931, no.66; Freeman, 2006, p.287
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
Private Collection, Bedfordshire
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Tate, London
The Great Hall, Conwy Castle
Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield
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
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, Birkenhead
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
British Museum, London
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
Birmingham Museum & 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
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
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
Private Collection, Bedfordshire
Cadair Idris, from the Estuary near Barmouth
Private Collection
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About this Work
This watercolour, showing the central part of the five-arched bridge over the river Llugwy at Betws-y-Coed, was produced by Girtin from a pencil drawing that he made on his tour to North Wales in the summer of 1798 (TG1331). Pont y Pair, meaning ‘the bridge over the cauldron’, was a popular subject with artists and patrons at this date, and Girtin himself painted another version of the composition on a similar generous scale (TG1333). In comparison with that work, though, this watercolour has faded to a significant degree, either as a result of the use of fugitive pigments or from long exposure to high light levels, with the result that the forms have lost their depth and the colour balance is undermined so that the earth tones predominate. Nonetheless, there is still much of interest here, including a good example of the artist changing his mind. Evidence of this can be seen in a disturbed area above the centre part of the bridge, where two figures have been scratched out and reinserted over the left-hand arch. The use of watercolour washes, which are more or less transparent, means that any such changes are liable to leave a visible trace. The work is also notable for one of Girtin’s visual puns, something that cannot be spoilt by its poor condition. Situated on the prominent rock to the right is an artist trying to catch his falling hat, dropping his palette in the process. Looked at in another way, the hat becomes an eye and the rock resembles a fish. This playful allusion to the perils of sketching from nature is not included in the original pencil drawing, and so this is not presumably what happened to Girtin during his visit to Betws-y-Coed. Nonetheless, I suspect that the image of an artist colouring on the spot was a reference to Girtin’s own practice during his visit to North Wales, and the idea that this is an oblique self-portrait is reinforced by a drawing by Henry Edridge (1768–1821) that similarly shows the artist working from nature seated on a stool (TG1923). The prominent fingerprint next to the stool does nothing to undermine the argument, nor does the evidence that Girtin added the figure at the last moment, since the colour of the rocks shows through both the artist’s clothes and the falling hat.
Pont y Pair was the subject of one of the pioneering Welsh views created by Paul Sandby (c.1730–1809) following his visit to North Wales in 1771 (see TG1333 figure 1). Employing the newly introduced aquatint technique, Sandby’s 1776 print offers an altogether more dramatic spectacle in which the starkly bare mountains and the raging torrents of water contrast with Girtin’s more sober view of the bridge. The region’s waterfalls, as much as its vaunted mountain scenery, feature heavily in both the accounts of contemporary tourists and Sandby’s prints, where the water consistently flows with a significantly greater force than in the equivalent scenes by Girtin. It seems that the weather the artist encountered in the summer of 1798, although far from ideal, was not as wet as that typically experienced by visitors.
On a technical note, the paper historian Peter Bower has identified the support used by Girtin as a laid cartridge 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.103; Bower, Report).
(?) 1798
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
TG1331
1798 - 1799
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
TG1333
(?) 1801
Thomas Girtin Sketching
TG1923