- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 42.9 × 56.6 cm, 16 ⅞ × 22 ¼ in
- Inscription
‘Girtin’ lower right, by Thomas Girtin
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; North Wales
Provenance
Sir Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough (1760–1838) and Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough (1772–1837); then by descent to Jane Emily Dawson (née Long); bought by the Squire Gallery, London at a 'Country House sale in Devon'; bought by the Museum, 1932
Bibliography
V&A, 1933, p.28; Hardie, 1934, p.14; Hardie, 1966–68, vol.2, p.3; Lambourne and Hamilton, 1980, p.151
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 is one of four versions of a composition that shows Caernarfon Castle and the Eagle Tower from the north west, looking across the river Seoint (the others being TG1309, TG1311 and TG1312). The watercolours, depicting the great thirteenth-century fortress built for Edward I (1239–1307), were presumably based on a drawing made by Girtin on his 1798 tour of North Wales, though the original sketch does not appear to have survived. The view was very popular with artists, amateur and professional alike. In choosing to portray the castle from this angle, with part of the town walls to the left, the mountains in the distance and a busy shipping scene in the foreground, Girtin followed in the footsteps of Paul Sandby (c.1730–1809) and Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1733–94), whilst the artist’s contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) made a very similar sketch just a few weeks after Girtin’s visit, probably sometime in August 1798 (see figure 1). According to one of the many tourists who visited Caernarfon at this time, Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838), this particular view provided ‘a glorious study for the artist’s portfolio’, since it was ‘truly picturesque’ on account of the ‘lively bustling scene’ of the port. The Eagle Tower, the scene of the birth of the first English Prince of Wales, may have been the ‘chief object of attraction’ for Hoare, but his preoccupation was primarily with the visual qualities of the site, unlike so many of his contemporaries, for whom the scene often sparked lengthy moral digressions (quoted in Thompson, 1983, p.263). These commonly took the form of criticism of Edward I’s despotic behaviour, and the castle itself was identified as a monument to ‘tyranny … calculated to keep the surrounding districts in awe and subjection’ (Hucks, 1795, p.91), whilst the king’s campaign in North Wales was said to be conducted at the expense of ‘Cambrian Independence and Cambrian Liberty’ (Evans, 1804, p.174). The Revd Richard Warner (1763–1857) echoed this sentiment, but, as he noted, the fine preservation of the castle ‘does not produce those lively emotions in the mind’ (Warner, 1799, p.139). The point is significant because Girtin would probably have known Warner’s text since his view of Tintern Abbey was used as the book’s frontispiece (see print after TG0058), and he may have shared its political sentiments, but, nonetheless, he did not feel able to develop a historical, associative reading of the scene any more than Sandby had done a generation earlier.
This is the largest of the four versions of Girtin’s composition and it may be the earliest, though the work’s faded condition makes that difficult to substantiate. I am not sure that precise dating is appropriate in any case, since, aside from their size, the works are extremely close, marked only by small differences in the shipping and figures and minor variations in the skies. The watercolour came from the collection of Sir Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough (1760–1838) and Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough (1772–1837), who may have commissioned it directly from the artist, along with other works including a view of Durham Cathedral (TG1079). Amelia Long was one of Girtin’s most significant pupils, copying his works on a number of occasions and generally working in his style (see TG1636 figure 2), and so it may be that it was she, rather than her husband, who bought the work from the artist. What was once said to represent a view near the Longs’ home in Bromley in Kent, but which is now thought to be another Welsh view, also came from their collection (TG1338), whilst a number of sketches that Girtin made in the countryside near their estate also survive (such as TG1422), though this view of Widmore was probably made before their arrival in the area.
1798 - 1799
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
TG1309
1798 - 1799
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
TG1311
1798 - 1799
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
TG1312
1791 - 1792
Tintern Abbey, from the River Wye
TG0058
1796 - 1797
Durham Cathedral, from the South West
TG1079
1798 - 1799
An Unidentified Landscape, Possibly the Vale of Clwyd
TG1338
1798 - 1799
A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
TG1422