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Creator:
Richard Wilson, 1713/4–1782
Title:
Caernarfon Castle
Former Title(s):
Caernarvon Castle [1985, Cormack, YCBA Concise Catalogue]
Date:
ca. 1745
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
25 1/2 x 41 5/16 inches (64.8 x 104.9 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.174
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:
B1976.7.174FR
Subject Terms:
artist | bay (body of water) | castle | costume | drawing | fortress | hills | houses | landscape | men | rowboats | ruins | sailboats | smoke
Associated Places:
Caernarfon | Caernarfon Bay | Caernarfon Castle | Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire | Cymru | Menai Strait | United Kingdom | Wales
Access:
Not on view
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:4996
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Caernarfon Castle, completed in 1745, was one of Wilson’s first landscapes, painted before he departed for Italy in 1750. Here, the castle, built by the English king Edward I, is noble in its centered position behind the sweeping body of water. Although Caernarfon in the eighteenth century was a thriving town with a busy port, Wilson’s view depicts the castle as a ruin in a tranquil backwater. As a Welsh- born intellectual, Wilson may have been demonstrating the presence of the ancient past in contemporary Wales and its suitability for representation by artists such as those working in the foreground.

Gallery label for Art in Focus: Wales (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-04-04 - 2014-08-10)
This and another closely similar version of the same view (private collection) may well have been Wilson's first essays in representing the scenery and antiquities of his native Wales. It was a field of subject matter that he was to explore throughout his career-indeed he painted several further views of Caernarvon Castle- and in which he was to be followed by countless other British landscapists, including the young Turner.
Caernarvon was the most imposing of the castles built by the English king Edward I to secure his occupation of Wales at the end of the thirteenth century. While still under construction it was the birthplace of the king's son, the future Edward II, who was the first English prince to be called Prince of Wales. Exactly how Wilson would have construed the historical signifigance of such a site is unclear, but for an artist who was Welsh it was surely one of particular resonance. The presence of the artist sketching in the foreground with a gentleman amateur at his side underlines the idea that this is also a place of serious interest from the artistic point of view.1 The view is from the south and shows the distinctive trio of turrets that rise above the Eagle Tower at the castle's western end. For the most part, however, Wilson has taken such liberties with the topographical facts of the place that it is barely recognizable. He has done away with the other towers along this side of the castle, cut down the Queen's Gate at its eastern end, and generally reduced a massive and forbidding fortress to a picturesque ruin, crumbling and overgrown. It is almost as though the work were a capriccio, showing the castle as it would appear after aging for another five centuries. The setting is fantastic too. In reality one sees the south side of the castle across the River Seiont, not across a pleasantly curving inlet of the sea. The town of Caernarvon, which surrounds the castle on the land side, has been almost completely omitted; and the hill on the right, Twt Hill, has been brought much closer than it actually is. The rude cottages to the right of the castle, which are the only indication of the town, seem placed to make what was a fairly commonplace point about ancient versus modern times: though in decay, the grandeur of the past makes the present seem mean and mundane.
Most of the landscapes Wilson painted before his stay in Italy follow models in earlier Dutch painting, but this example shows him moving toward the Italianate or classical pattern of his mature style. Although the handling of details is raw and rustic by the standards of his later compositions, the overall design recalls those French painters whose work was the touchstone of classical landscape, Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Dughet.

Malcolm Warner

Malcolm Warner, This other Eden, paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 68, no. 21, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)

Art in Focus : The British Castle - A Symbol in Stone (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-04-07 - 2017-08-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Art in Focus : Wales (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-04-04 - 2014-08-10) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Fairest Isle - The Appreciation of British Scenery 1750-1850 (Yale Center for British Art, 1989-04-12 - 1989-06-25) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Presences of Nature - British Landscape 1780-1830 (Yale Center for British Art, 1982-10-20 - 1983-02-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The Pursuit of Happiness - A View of Life in Georgian England (Yale Center for British Art, 1977-04-19 - 1977-09-18) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Caernarvon Castle, Scottish Art Review, vol. 11, 1968, p. 4, J10 Sc87 (SML) [ORBIS]

Christie's sale catalogue : Old pictures, the property of a gentleman; also pictures and drawings from numerous private collections and different sources : 3 June 1901, Christie's, June 3, 1901, p. 22, lot 145, Fiche B51 (YCBA) [YCBA]

W. G. Constable, Richard Wilson, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1953, pp. 93-94,109,, pl. 32a, NJ18 W72 C55 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp, 250, 251, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Megan Cullen, Fairest isle : the appreciation of British scenery, 1750-1850 : [exhibition] label copy. Yale Center for British Art, April 12-June 25, 1989., , Yale Center for British Art, [New Haven, 1989, p. 42, no. 95, ND1354.4 F351 1989 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Catherine M. Gordon, British paintings Hogarth to Turner, Frederick Warne, London, 1981, p.76, ND466 .G67 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Louis Hawes, Presences of Nature : British Landscape, 1780-1830, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1982, p.141, no. III.1, pl. 116, ND1354.4 H38 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Luke Herrmann, British landscape painting of the eighteenth century., Faber & Faber, London, 1973, p. 57, pl. 49b, ND1354.4 H47 1973 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, p. 68, no. 21, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Museum Boymans-Van Beuningen, Engelse landschapschilders van Gainsborough tot Turner, [Deze tentoonstelling werd samengesteld uit schilderijen in Britse verzamelingen. Zij werd georganiseerd door de British Council in samenwerking met het Museum Boymans] , Rotterdam, 1955, no. 69, ND1354 M87 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Robert Michael Neuman, Baroque and Rococo art and architecture, Pearson, Boston, 2013, pp. 391-92, fig. 14.13, N6415.B3 N48 2013 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 3, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

J. H. Plumb, The pursuit of happiness : a view of life in Georgian England : an exhibition selected from the Paul Mellon collection, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1977, pp. 34, 78, no. 21, fig. 21, N6766 Y34 1977 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Martin Postle, Richard Wilson and the transformation of European landscape painting, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2014, pp. 189-190, NJ18.W72 R53 2014 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Graham Reynolds, Masterpieces in Mourning, TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, Issue no. 4158, December 10, 1982, p.1364, Film S748 (SML) Also Available Online in TLS Historical Archive [ORBIS]

Duncan Robinson, Fairest isle : the appreciation of British scenery, 1750-1850, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1989, p. 12, no. 95, ND1354.4 F35 (YCBA) [YCBA]

David H. Solkin, Exhibition Catalogue Review, Apollo, vol. 251,no. 117, January 1983, pp. 39-45, N1 A54 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

David H. Solkin, Richard Wilson, the landscape of reaction, Tate Publishing, London, 1982, pp. 18, 28, 148, no. 7, col. pl. 2, no. 7, NJ18 W72 S65 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Spencer-Longhurst, Paul, with Kate Lowry and David Solkin, Richard Wilson Online : A Digital Catalogue Raisonne, , The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London, 2014, no. P12A, http://www.richardwilsononline.ac.uk/index.php?WINID=1582051040261 [Website]

Tate Gallery, London [Exhibit], Magazine Antiques, vol. 122, December 1982, p. 1216, NK1125 A3 OVERSIZE (HAAS) [ORBIS]

The British Castle : A Symbol in Stone, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2017, p. 28, cat. 23, V2722 (YCBA) [YCBA]

The Treasure houses of Britain, five hundred years of private patronage and art collecting. , National Gallery of Art, [Washington, D.C., 1985, o. 387, no. 318, N5245 T74 1985 + (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale Center for British Art, Wales, New Haven, 2014, p. 20, V2519 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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