- 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
- 35.1 × 52.5 cm, 13 ¾ × 20 ⅝ in
- Inscription
‘Girtin’ lower left, by Thomas Girtin
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Bridges and Weirs; North Wales; Waterfall Scenery
-
- Catalogue Number
- TG1333
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 291ii as 'Pont-y-Pair, Bettws-Y-Coed, Caernarvonshire'; '1799'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 1998; Museum Website
Provenance
Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74); then by descent to George Wyndham Hog Girtin (1835–1911) (lent to London, 1875); then by descent to Thomas Girtin (1874–1960); sold to Walker's Galleries, London, 1918; bought by Mr Learoyd, 1918; ... S. D. Wetham; his sale, Christie’s, 6 November 1973, lot 143; bought by the Fry Gallery, London, £1,785; ... Sotheby’s, 9 November 1995, lot 32, unsold; Sotheby’s, 16 July 1998, lot 42, £6,325; Martyn Gregory Ltd; bought by George and Patti White, 1999; lent to Harvard Art Museums, 2023
Exhibition History
London, 1875, no.95; Martyn Gregory, London, 1999, no.33
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 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 (TG1332), which is in the collection of Tate Britain. Trying to establish which version of a Girtin composition came first is generally a pointless exercise, but in this case there is reasonable evidence that this signed work is the later of the two. Thus, the fact that the very faded watercolour in the collection of Tate Britain includes clear signs of a change of mind in the positioning of the figures on the bridge suggests that it was the first to be painted, which would mean that this version incorporates the resulting improvement. Another popular North Wales view, Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River, exists in a number of almost identical versions (TG1340, TG1341, TG1342 and TG1343), evidence that Girtin was able and willing to make as many replicas of a subject as the market supported, but this was not the case here. Although the other watercolour has been severely compromised by its faded condition, its overall effect was clearly more sombre than the sunnier effect shown here, and a careful comparison of the two works shows that there are numerous differences in the configuration of the vegetation and the rocks in the water. The most striking of these is not necessarily an improvement, however, as the nearest boulder to the right has been changed to a more rounded form, so that without the arresting detail of the artist attempting to rescue his falling hat and palette, which so enlivens the foreground of the Tate version, the rock no longer assumes the arresting form of a fish.
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 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.
When Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) sold the watercolour in 1918 to Walker’s Galleries in London, he claimed that he had inherited the work by direct descent from the artist. Exhaustive research in the Girtin Archive has not revealed any evidence to substantiate the claim, however, and, given that the sale held by the artist’s widow in 1803 almost certainly disposed of all of the works left unsold at his death (Exhibitions: Christie’s, 1 June 1803), it is much more likely that Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74), the artist’s son, acquired it on the art market at a later date.
(?) 1798
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
TG1331
1798 - 1799
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
TG1332
1798 - 1799
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
TG1340
1798 - 1799
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
TG1341
1798 - 1799
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
TG1342
1798 - 1799
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
TG1343