Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (The State Hermitage Museum, 2007-10-23 - 2008-01-13)Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007-07-11 - 2007-09-30)Presences of Nature - British Landscape 1780-1830 (Yale Center for British Art, 1982-10-20 - 1983-02-27)
Publications:
Louis Hawes, Presences of Nature : British Landscape, 1780-1830, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1982, p. 123, no. I.20, pl. 100, ND1354.4 H38 (YCBA)Edward. Morris, Constable's clouds : paintings and cloud studies by John Constable, , National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh & Liverpool, UK, 2000, p. 144, fig. 74, NJ18 C74 C76 2000 + (YCBA)Yale Center for British Art, Great British watercolors : from the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007, pp. 84-85, no. 35, ND1928 .Y35 2007 (LC)+ Oversize (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Joshua Cristall preferred to paint ambitious figurative watercolors of classical subjects, but he did paint and exhibit landscapes on occasion. This landscape was probably the product of a tour of Wales made in 1803 with fellow painter Cornelius Varley. While this view of cloud-covered mountain tops achieves a sublimity akin to the work of Alexander Cozens, the attempt to capture the precise atmospheric conditions marks a shift in the depiction of nature. Cristall strives to record actual meteorological phenomena by carefully rendering the low-lying stratus clouds, shifting dawn colors, and the patch of green landscape glimpsed through the cloud. Cornelius Varley’s diary of this tour with Cristall records the pair risking life and limb in the mountains of Wales in order to record unusual atmospheric effects such as this. Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)