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    300 years
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    Dolbadarn Castle and Llyn Peris

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    Dolbadarn Castle and Llyn Peris
    Dolbadarn Castle and Llyn Peris
    Dolbadarn Castle and Llyn Peris
    National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Felton Bequest, 1949)
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    Artist
    Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
    Title
    Dolbadarn Castle and Llyn Peris
    Date
    c.1762-64 (undated)
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    Metric: 96 x 131 cm
    Imperial: 37 13/16 x 51 9/16 in.
    Collection
    National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. To license image, click here.
    Accession Number
    2055-4
    Wilson Online Reference
    P120
    Description
    The view is in Caernarvonshire (Gwynedd), North Wales, looking south along Llyn Padarn [sic], towards the ancient British fortress of Dolbadarn Castle and Llyn Peris beyond with Snowdon in the distance. On the lake itself ducks are swimming and boats are sailing. Cattle graze on the banks to the left and further back a country house with a walled garden is set on a hill, later occupied by the now disused Dinorwig slate quarry. In the foreground two boys are fishing, one of whom has just caught an eel. Next to them a pitchfork or some spades lie discarded by the fallen tree trunk.
    Exhibited
    National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, The Great Eighteenth Century Exhibition, 1983 (no cat. nos); London, Cardiff and New Haven, 1982-83 (105)
    Provenance
    Anon sale Christie's 15 July 1899 (67 - Italian Riverscene, and Castle, 37 x 50 in.), bt Tooth; Pierpont Morgan, New York; his daughter, Mrs Herbert L. Satterlee, New York; Herbert L. Satterlee, New York; sold Parke Bernet, New York, 22 April 1948 (21 - Pozzuoli from across the Bay of Baiae), bt Weitzner, New York; 1948, with Arthur Tooth & Sons, London; acquired on the advice of A.J.L. McDonnell and Sir Kenneth Clark for the Felton Bequest in 1948; arrived Melbourne in 1949
    Signature/inscription
    Signed on the rock at the left: RW [monogram, the R reversed]
    Techniques and materials
    Very beautifully differentiated technique and fresh impasto in the clouds. The details of the distant figures, animals and boats are carefully painted, as is the variegated foreground undergrowth. The horizon line is drawn down from the sky in the accustomed Wilson manner. A possible third figure or tree stump is discernible to the naked eye behind and to the left of the fisherman with the eel.
    Subject
    Dolbadarn Castle was built by Llywelyn Fawr in the early 13th century. It was an important stronghold of the princes of Gwynedd and commanded the route from Caernarvon to the upper valley of the Conwy. According to the traveller and antiquarian Thomas Pennant, the fortress was intended to defend the pass into the interior parts of Snowdonia and was used as a state prison (A Tour in Wales, vol. 2, 1783, p. 165). Overlooking Llyn Peris and commanding the route from Caernarvon to the upper Conwy Valley, the castle was popular with tourists in the late 18th century and became a central image in the history of Wales. It was later the subject of J.M.W. Turner's Diploma picture for the Royal Academy. In its various versions the subject has been given a number of different titles.
    Related Drawings
    D343 Dolbadarn Castle and Llyn Peris, The British Museum
    Related Prints
    E78/2 Havell after Wilson, The Ruined Fortress, The British Museum
    Versions
    See 'Links' tab
    Related Paintings
    P127 The Lake of Nemi or Speculum Dianae with Dolbadarn Castle, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery
    P112 View in Windsor Great Park, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
    Related Works by Other Artists
    [1] Gaspard Dughet, Ideal Landscape , c.1658-60, Glasgow Museums
    [2] Paul Sandby, Llyn Peris and Dolbadarn Castle, watercolour, 1764, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
    [3] George Barret Sr, Llanberis Lake and Dolbadarn Castle in the Mountains of Wales, 1777, Nottingham Castle Art Gallery and Museum, Nottingham
    [4] J.M.W. Turner, Dolbadarn Castle, RA 1800, Royal Academy of Arts, London
    Critical commentary
    As recognised by David Solkin, this may have been the first Welsh landscape that Wilson painted after his stay in Italy. In a deliberate attempt to add serious intellectual meaning to an exercise in landscape topography he has forced the rugged outlines of the natural site into the civilising contours of classical landscape art. As a result the picture hardly resembles the actual place. Dolbadarn Castle itself, however, had acquired added status as a ruin symbolic of ancient Britain's glorious past. The composition was used again by Wilson in about 1764/65 in P127 Lake of Nemi or Speculum Dianae with Dolbadarn Castle, Bristol City Art Gallery.
    Bibliography
    Pennant 1784, vol. 2, p. 157; WGC, pp. 89, 100, 176, pl. 37b; Hoff 1973, pp. 165-66, fig. 207; D.H. Solkin 1981, p. 413, pl. 26; Solkin 1982, pp. 215-16 and chapter IV; J. Clark, The Great Eighteenth Century Exhibition, Melbourne 1983, pp. 96-97; Tomory & Gaston 1989, p. 52, no. 141, repr.; Hoff 1995, pp. 319-20
    Link to WG Constable Archive Record
    WGC/1/1/43
    Condition/Conservation
    In a period or nineteenth-century frame. Glazed. Cleaned before acquisition. Relined. Probably at the time of relining the paint surface was extended by strip of about 2.5 cm at the top and bottom, perhaps to fit a frame. There are some old repaired damages to the sky.
    Updated by Compiler
    2021-06-14 00:00:00

    Work of Art

    Drawings

    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), Dolbadarn Castle and Llyn Peris, The British Museum

    Prints

    • Frederick James Havell after Wilson, The Ruined Fortress, The British Museum

    Versions

    • Studio of Wilson, Dolbadarn Castle and Llanberis Lake, The Cooper Gallery, Barnsley, Yorkshire
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) Llyn Peris and Dolbadarn Castle, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    • Ascribed to Wilson, Dolbadarn Castle, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)and later intervention, Llyn Peris and Dolbadarn Castle, North Wales, Private Collection, Nottinghamshire

    Paintings

    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), The Lake of Nemi or Speculum Dianae with Dolbadarn Castle, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), View in Windsor Great Park, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

    Exhibitions

    • London, Tate Gallery, Cardiff, National Museum of Wales, and New Haven, Conn., Yale Center for British Art, 3 November 1982 - 19 June 1983

    Documents

    • William George Constable, Richard Wilson
    • David Solkin, Richard Wilson: The Landscape of Reaction
    • Ursula Hoff, European Paintings before 1800 in the National Gallery of Victoria
    • Ursula Hoff, European Painting and Sculpture before 1900
    • Peter Tomory & Robert Gaston, European Paintings before 1800 in Australian and New Zealand Public Collections
    • David Solkin, 'Richard Wilson's Variations on a Theme by Gaspard Dughet'
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