Richard Wilson, 1713/4–1782, British, active in Italy (1750–56)
Title:
Dinas Bran from Llangollen
Date:
1770 to 1771
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
71 × 96 3/8 inches (180.3 × 244.8 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Label on verso, center: “Thos. Agnew & Sons Ltd. | [logo] No 34222 | [...] | London, | 43, Old Bond Street. | Piccadilly, W.”; upper center: “[...] | Royal Academy Exhibition of the Works of the Old Masters, [...] | Name of Artist Wilson | Title of Work The V[...] of Llangollen | Name and Address of P[...] | Sir Watkin Williams Wynn [...] | [...]”
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1976.7.83
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
Welsh | valley | village | landscape | ruins | country house | costume | axe | tools | bucket | laundering | woman | men | family | laborers | castle | fort | fortress | bridge (built work) | hills | river | sheep
Associated Places:
Dee | Castell Dinas Brân | Denbighshire | Cymru | Wales | United Kingdom | Chirk
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-03-06 - 2014-06-01)Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting (National Museum Wales, 2014-07-05 - 2014-10-26)Nobleness and Grandeur - Forging Historical Landscape in Britain, 1760 - 1850 (Yale Center for British Art, 2005-01-27 - 2005-04-24)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15)Richard Wilson - The Landscape of Reaction (Tate Britain, 1982-11-03 - 1983-01-02)Richard Wilson - The Landscape of Reaction (National Museum Wales, 1983-01-29 - 1983-03-20)Richard Wilson - The Landscape of Reaction (Yale Center for British Art, 1983-04-20 - 1983-06-19)
Publications:
Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, Landscape aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760-1800 , Scolar Press, Aldershot, England, 1989, pp. 114-15, fig. 29, BH301 L3 A53 (YCBA)Art Exhibitions, English Landscapes , The Times (London), London, Friday, November 19, 1926, p. 12, Available online : Times Digital Archive Also available on Microfilm : An T482 (SML)Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester Times, Manchester, Saturday, June 6, 1857, p. 7, Online Resource Available online at 19th Century British Library NewspapersEmma Barker, Art & visual culture, 1600-1850 : academy to avant-garde, , Tate Publishing, London, 2012, pp.274, 276, pl. 7.15, N6756 .A78 2012 (YCBA)David Bindman, The History of British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2008, pp. 39-40 (vol. 2), fig. 12, N6761 +H57 2008 Oversize (YCBA)British Art at Yale, Apollo, vol.105, April 1977, pp. 286-288, fig. 1, N1 .A54 + OVERSIZE (YCBA)Frederick Burwick, The Romantic imagination, literature and art in England and Germany , Rodopi, Amsterdam, Atlanta. GA, 1996, p. 226, fig. 81, NX543 R65 1996 (YCBA)Jill H. Casid, Sowing empire, landscape and colonization , University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2005, p. 180, SB121 C27 2005 (YCBA)Catalogue of an exhibition of pictures by Richard Wilson and his circle : organized by the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, January, 1949, The Tate Gallery, London, , Tate Britain, London, 1949, p. 24, no. 63, NJ18 W72 T37 (YCBA)Catalogue of pictures by Richard Wilson and his circle, November 17-January 9 1948-9 , City Museum & Art Gallery Birmingham, Birmingham, 1948, p. 21, no. 64, V 2449 (YCBA)Catalogue of the art treasures of the United Kingdom : collected at Manchester in 1857, Bradbury and Evans, London, 1857, p. 79, no. 38, N5056 .M35 M25 1857 (YCBA)W. G. Constable, Richard Wilson, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1953, pp. 175-76, no. 36, pl. 26a, NJ18 W72 C55 (YCBA)W. G. Constable, Richard Wilson, some pentimenti , Burlington Magazine, vol. 614, May 1954, p. 140, N1 B87 96 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, A Selective Promenade, Apollo, vol.105, April 1977, pp. 286-288, fig. 1, N1 A54 + (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 252, 253, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)Stephen Daniels, Paul Sandby, picturing Britain , Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009, fig. 50, NJ18 Sa56 P3 2009 + OVERSIZE (YCBA)Sir Brinsley Ford, Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, A Welsh Maecenas , Apollo, vol. 99, June 1974, p. 438, N1 A54 99:2 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Sir Brinsley Ford, The Drawings of Richard Wilson, Faber & Faber, London, 1951, pp. 38, 63, NJ18 W72 F6 1951 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Sir Brinsley Ford, The Richard Wilson Exhibition at Birmingham, Burlington Magazine, vol. 90 no. 548, November 1948, p. 326, N1 B87 90 OVERSIZE (YCBA)E. H. Gombrich, Visual Discovery through Art, Arts Magazine, November 1965, pp. 17-28, N1 A415 OVERSIZE (HAAS)Catherine M. Gordon, British paintings Hogarth to Turner, Frederick Warne, London, 1981, p. 76, ND466 .G67 (YCBA)Luke Herrmann, [ Exhibition Reviews ] Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting, YCBA, New Haven, 6 March - 1 June National Museum Wales / Amueddfa Cymru, Cardiff 5 July - 26 October , British Art Journal, Vol. 15, Autumn 2014, p. 121, N6761 B74 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Olivia Horsfall Turner, Nobleness & grandeur : forging historical landscape in Britain 1760-1850, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2005, p. 13, no. 23, V 1420 (YCBA)John Cassell's Art treasures exhibition : containing engravings of the principal masterpieces of the English, Dutch, Flemish, French and German schools, with biographical sketches of the painters, and critical notices of their productions, , W. Kent and Co., London, 1858, p. 110, N5056 .M36 C3 1858 (YCBA) Available in YCBA Rare Books & ManuscriptsWilliam Laffan, Thomas Roberts, landscape and patronage in eighteenth-century Ireland. , Churchill House Press, Tralee, 2009, pp. 250-1, fig. 203, NJ18.R544 L35 2009 + (YCBA)Peter Lord, Gwenllian, essays on visual culture , Gomer Press, Llandysul, Dyfed, 1994, p. 43, N6792 L67 1994 (YCBA)Peter Lord, Imaging the nation, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2000, pp. 116-123, fig. 185, N6792 L675 2000 (YCBA)Peter Lord, The tradition : a new history of Welsh art, 1400-1990, Parthian, Cardigan, 2016, pp. 104-105, fig. 108, N6792 .L678 2016 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 16, 78, no. 26, fig. 15, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (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)Elizabeth A. Pergam, The Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 : entrepreneurs, connoisseurs and the public, , Ashgate Publishing, Surrey, UK and Burlington, VT, 2011, p. 312, No. 151 in AT Ex, N5056 M35 P47 2011 (YCBA)Martin Postle, Richard Wilson and the transformation of European landscape painting, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2014, pp. 113, 138-139, 165-166, 186, 199-200, 266-267, no. 81, NJ18.W72 R53 2014 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Ron Radford, Island to empire : 300 years of British art, 1550-1850 : paintings, watercolours, drawings, sculptures from the collection of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, 2005, pp. 144, 146, N3913.5 .R34 2005 (LC)+ Oversize (YCBA)Michael Rosenthal, The art of Thomas Gainsborough, "a little business for the eye" , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1999, p. 204, pl. 201, NJ18 G16 R67 1999 (YCBA)Royal Academy of Arts, Exhibition Catalogue. 1771. 3d, Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts, no. 3, London, 1771, p. 21, no. 222, N5054 A53 (YCBA)Robin Simon, Royal Academy of Arts: History and Collections, New Haven, p. 80, fig. 65, N1100 A869 2018 (LC) Oversize (YCBA)David H. Solkin, Exhibition Catalogue Review, Pantheon, vol. 41, Jan-March 1983, pp. 70-71, N3 P3 OVERSIZE (HAAS)David H. Solkin, Exhibition Catalogue Review, Journal of Garden History, vol. 3, July-Sept. 1983, pp. 249-51, SB451 J68 (SML & HAAS)David H. Solkin, Richard Wilson, the landscape of reaction, Tate Publishing, London, 1982, pp. 120, 130-31, 237, 238, no. 133, col. pl. XVI\; no. 133, NJ18 W72 S65 + (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. P165, http://www.richardwilsononline.ac.uk/index.php?WINID=1582051040261David Stacey, [ Exhibition Reviews ] And another view of the Richard Wilson exhibition ..., British Art Journal, vol. 15, Autumn 2014, p. 123, N6761 B74 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Denys Sutton, A meditative love of nature, The Richard Wilson Exhibition , Apollo, vol. 117, 1983, p. 44, N1 A54 117:1 OVERSIZE (YCBA)The Companion to a Walk Through the Art Exhibition of Paintings and Engravings at Old Trafford Palace, A. Ireland and Co., Manchester : UK, 1857, p. 62, no. 38, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t10p4pj8s&view=1up&seq=1Thomas Wright, Some account of the life of Richard Wilson, Esq. R.A., Longman, London, 1824, pp. 14, 106, 272, ND497 W7 W7 OVERSIZE (RARE BOOKS YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Painted at the height of Richard Wilson’s career as a landscape painter, just before his precipitous decline into ill health and poverty, this view in Wales is one of a pair (its companion piece is shown opposite) that hung in the London home of Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn. WilliamsWynn was one of the richest men in Britain, and this would have been perhaps the most prestigious commission of Wilson’s life. As Welshmen, both Wilson and his patron would have found special nationalistic significance in the depiction of the ancient Welsh fortress of Dinas Bran. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016