- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- The Great Hall, Conwy Castle
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and stopping out on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 48.9 × 40 cm, 19 ¼ × 15 ¾ in
- Inscription
‘Girtin’ lower left, by Thomas Girtin
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; North Wales
-
- Collection
- Versions
-
The Great Hall, Conwy Castle
(TG1305)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1306
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 320ii as 'Conway Castle'; '1799'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001
Provenance
J. Palser & Sons; bought by James Leslie Wright (1862–1954), 25 February 1932 (lent to Birmingham, 1939); bought by the Fine Art Society, London, 1942, £126; bought from them by John George Graves (1866–1945), 1943; bequeathed to the Gallery, 1946
Exhibition History
Birmingham, 1939, no.194; Fine Art Society, 1943, no.41; Arts Council, 1947b, no.37; Arts Council, 1948b, no.14; Brighton, 1957, no.48; Welsh Arts Council, 1964, no.196; Nottingham, 1988, no.17
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 fine watercolour showing the overgrown and ruined interior of the Great Hall of Conwy Castle is based on an on-the-spot colour sketch that Girtin made on his tour to North Wales in the summer of 1798 (TG1305). Whether the artist made his sketch with a commission for a view of the Great Hall already in hand is not known as we have no information about the watercolour’s early provenance. What is clear, though, is that although Girtin had portrayed Conway Castle from a number of angles prior to visiting the ruins himself in 1798 – having realised at least two different views of the castle from on-the-spot drawings made by his first patron, the antiquarian and amateur artist James Moore (1762–99) (TG0107 and TG0141) – he did not have access to a sketch of the less obviously picturesque Great Hall. This is not entirely surprising since although the castle, with its plethora of towers and largely intact walls ‘rising sublimely above a noble estuary’, was popular with amateur and professional artists alike as it produced an ‘effect prodigiously grand’, the Great Hall itself does not appear to have been the subject of a significant watercolour before Girtin’s view, and many of the subsequent depictions, including etchings by George Cuitt the Younger (1779–1854) and a fine watercolour by Samuel Prout (1783–1852) (see figure 1), were made under his influence (Broster, 1802, p.141). What appears to be a pioneering view of the ruined hall may have been specified by a knowledgeable tourist, but it may equally have been a case of Girtin seeking out a different angle on a subject that was in danger of going stale through repetition.
All of this is in contrast to the tourist literature on North Wales that proliferated in the 1790s, which commonly described the Great Hall, ‘where the conquering Edward held his levies, and issued forth mandates to his new subjects’ (Anonymous, 1797a, p.95). Not all of these accounts were critical of Edward I (1239–1307) and his frankly imperial project in North Wales, and others, such as the author of a pedestrian tour through the region, the Revd Richard Warner (1763–1857), saw the building more in terms of the ‘Merrie England’ version of the Middle Ages, claiming that ‘on entering this noble room, the idea of ancient revelry instantly occurs to the mind, and imagination hurries back to those times’ (Warner, 1799, p.154). Girtin’s image may have evoked similar sentiments for contemporary viewers, but there is nothing in the work that might be seen as prompting anything more than a general sense of the transience of earthly glory, and it lacks the overt drama, if not melodrama, of Prout’s near contemporary moonlit view, which is more in keeping with the spirit of Matthew Lewis (1775–1818) and his play The Castle Spectre. Published in the same year that Girtin visited Conwy, the Gothic drama describes the ghostly figures that ‘abound in this melancholy mansion’, not least Lord Hildebrand, ‘condemned for treason’, who ‘may be seen in the Great Hall, regularly at midnight playing at foot-ball with his own head!’ (Lewis, 1798, pp.22–23). Girtin’s daylit view, in contrast, shows a conspicuously ordinary scene, with just two workmen with a ladder and a pickaxe clearing away the rubble from the ruins, with not a football in sight.
The watercolour has faded somewhat and in consequence the browns and yellows are too dominant, but it is still an attractive work. From a technical point of view it is notable for its unusually extensive employment of stopping-out in the foreground, used as well for the bird in the centre, and even for the artist’s signature to the left. The use of a wax-based resist, which might be brushed in, washed over and then removed by gently heating to leave negative areas as highlights, is more commonly associated with Girtin’s contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) at this date, though it is employed in some of the other larger Welsh scenes, including The Cain Falls (TG1320) and The Ogwen Falls (TG1330).
A copy of this work is in the collection of Dunedin Public Art Gallery, New Zealand, as by an unknown artist with the title Ruined Cathedral (see figure 2). The work was seen by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) when it was in the collection of Archdeacon Francis Smythe (1873–1966), and in his notes on the collection he stated that it was ‘done by a pupil working directly under Girtin in his studio, and being assisted by him’, and he thought that the sky was Girtin’s work (Girtin Archive, 27). Even working from an online image, the latter opinion appears somewhat far-fetched.
(?) 1798
The Great Hall, Conwy Castle
TG1305
1792 - 1793
Conwy Castle, Looking West
TG0107
1792 - 1793
Conwy Castle: The Bakehouse Tower
TG0141
1798 - 1799
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
TG1320
1798 - 1799
The Ogwen Falls
TG1330