Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1981.25.265
Gallery Label:
These two sweeping views (27 and 33) celebrate the market town of Shrewsbury, just east of the Welsh border. The panoramic perspective accentuates the town’s role as a source of culture and influence in the broader landscape, highlighting the trade and travel that the river Severn facilitates in one view and the bountiful pastureland and abbey in the other. Shrewsbury Castle, a red sandstone behemoth built along with the abbey in the late eleventh century, is conspicuously absent from both views, suggesting that the castle, in private hands at the time of the painting’s completion, had diminished relevance in comparison to the town’s religious and economic life. Gallery label for Art in Focus: The British Castle - A Symbol in Stone (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-04-07 - 2017-08-06)
