Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.115
Gallery Label:
This is one of the earliest paintings known to depict a great house and estate from a bird's-eye view. The house was built in the late sixteenth century, but the elaborate gardens were not laid out until the 1660s. This painting was probably commissioned to mark their completion by Mutton Davies, who inherited the house from his father in 1666. He was an admirer of the formal gardens he saw in 1654 on his tour of Italy and France, and sought to replicate them at home in Wales. The garden was formed out of broad terraces that led from one side of the house downhill to the river, a convenient position for the basin of the largest fountain, with its statue of Neptune. Each of the intervening "hanging gardens" is punctuated by sanded walkways, smaller fountains, evergreen trees and shrubs planted in geometric patterns, small buildings, and grottoes built in the classical style. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005