The Junction of the Severn and the Wye with Chepstow in the Distance
Date:
1830
Materials & Techniques:
Watercolor with stopping out, scraping out, and gouache on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 31 x 42 inches (78.7 x 106.7 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B2000.3
Gallery Label:
The views over the mouth of the Wye where it enters the tidal estuary of the Severn are among the most celebrated in England, familiar to the countless tourists in search of the picturesque who have flocked to the Wye from the eighteenth century on. J. M. W. Turner included a view of the junction, from a different vantage point but with a similarly Claudean composition, in the Liber Studiorum in 1811. During his twelve years in Hereford, Cox became well acquainted with the scenery of the Wye Valley, and the view from the Wyndcliff appears frequently in his watercolors of the 1820s and early 1830s. The present watercolor, almost certainly the one exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1830 as “The Severn and the Wye, from Wyndcliff” and sold to a Mrs. Roberts for 50 guineas, is his grandest treatment of the scene. Gallery label for Sun, Wind, and Rain - The Art of David Cox (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-10-16 - 2009-01-04)
