Welsh art is the traditions in the visual arts associated with Wales and its people. Most art found in, or connected with, Wales is essentially a regional variant of the forms and styles of the rest of the British Isles, a very different situation from that of Welsh literature. The term Art in Wales is often used in the absence of a clear sense of what "Welsh art" is, and to include the very large body of work, especially in landscape art, produced by non-Welsh artists in Wales (or with a Welsh subject) since the later 18th century.Houseley explores the lack of a clear sense of "Welsh art" among contemporary artists and in Wales generally. See also Morgan, 371–372.
Early history
Prehistoric Wales has left a number of significant finds: Kendrick's Cave, Llandudno contained the Kendrick's Cave Decorated Horse Jaw, "a decorated horse jaw which is not only the oldest known work of art from Wales but also unique among finds of Ice Age art from Europe", and is now in the British Museum.Kendrick's Cave BM touring exhibition, BM Highlights In 2011 "faint scratchings of a speared reindeer" were found on a cave wall on the Gower Peninsula which probably date to 12,000–14,000 BC, placing them among the earliest art found in Britain."Carving found in Gower cave could be oldest rock art", BBC News online, South-West Wales, July 25, 2011 The Mold Gold Cape, also in the British Museum, and Banc Ty'nddôl sun-disc in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff are likewise some of the most important British works of art from the Bronze Age.
Many works of Iron Age Celtic art have been found in Wales. and the finds from the period shortly before and after the Roman conquest, which reached Wales in AD 74-8, are especially significant. Pieces of metalwork from Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey and other sites exemplify the final stages of La Tène style in the British Isles, and the Capel Garmon Firedog is a spectacular luxury piece of ironwork, among the finest in Europe from the period. The Abergavenny Leopard Cup, from the decades after the conquest, was found in 2003, and shows the presence of imported Roman luxury products in Wales, perhaps belonging to a soldier.
In the Early Medieval period, the Celtic Christianity of Wales participated in the Insular art of the British Isles and a number of illuminated manuscripts possibly of Welsh origin survive, of which the 8th century Hereford Gospels and Lichfield Gospels are the most notable. The 11th century Ricemarch Psalter (now in Dublin) is certainly Welsh, made in St David's, and shows a late Insular style with unusual Viking influence, which is also seen in surviving pieces of metalwork of that period.
There are only fragments of the architecture of the period remaining. Unlike Irish high cross and Pictish stones, early Welsh standing stones mainly employ geometric patterns and words, rather than figure representation; however, 10th century stones represent Christ and various saints. Little metalwork survives from the early period of the 5th–9th centuries in Wales. However, archaeological sites at Dinas Powys have revealed various artifacts such as penannular brooches and other pieces of jewellery. Similar brooches have been discovered a site at Penycorddyn-mawr, near Abergele, dating to the 8th century. During this period, the construction of Holy wells was also particularly commonplace in Wales.
Wales has rarely been very prosperous, and the most striking medieval architecture is military, often built by the Normans and English, especially the famous "Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd" and Beaumaris Castle in Anglesey, recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Caerphilly Castle and the castles of the Welsh Prince Llywelyn the Great (such as Criccieth Castle and Dolbadarn Castle). There are a number of impressive monastic ruins; Welsh medieval churches are nearly all relatively modest, including the cathedrals. They very often had wall-paintings, panel altarpieces and much other religious art, but as in the rest of Britain very little has survived. Conwy, an English garrison town with its medieval walls almost entirely intact, has a notable example of a 13th-century medieval stone town-house.
The Renaissance in Wales Peter Lord suggests that the Renaissance began in Wales around 1400."Art historian Peter Lord talks The Tradition: A New History of Welsh Art: "It's a book for everyone" ", South Wales Evening Post, 7 March 2016. Accessed 3 April 2016 Much of the art produced in this period was created in or for the church. Strata Florida Abbey, for example, retains some of its medieval decorated tiles.
Despite the widespread destruction that took place during the Reformation and later the Commonwealth, a number of Welsh churches retain fragments of medieval stained glass. These include All Saints' Church, Gresford, St Michael's Church, Caerwys, St Mary's Church, Treuddyn, St Elidan's Church, Llanelidan, Church of St Mary & St Nicholas, Beaumaris, St Gwyddelan's Church, Dolwyddelan, and St David's Cathedral.
Fifteenth-century wall paintings have been uncovered in several Welsh church buildings, including St Cadoc's Church, Llancarfan,"Welsh church uncovers stunning medieval wall paintings", BBC News, 6 December 2013. Accessed 3 April 2016 St Illtyd's Church, Llantwit Major (which has a painting of Saint Christopher believed to date from around 1400), and St Teilo's Church, Llandeilo Tal-y-bont. The latter, during its reconstruction at St Fagans National History Museum during the 1990s, was found to contain wall paintings from several different periods, the earliest estimated as being from the first half of the fifteenth century.Tom Organ, "Reconstructing Medieval Wall Paintings at St Teilo's", www.building.conservation.com. Accessed 3 April 2016 The wall paintings at Llancarfan are said to be "beyond compare in Wales".
Plas Mawr, a grand Elizabethan town-house in Conwy, built by Robert Wynn, a local man who had been English ambassador to the Holy Roman Emperor, has been extensively restored by Cadw, both inside and out, to reflect its appearance when built in the second half of the sixteenth century.Cadw: Plas Mawr . Accessed 3 April 2016 Wales has numerous country houses from all periods after the Elizabethan, many still containing good portraits, but these were mostly painted in London or on the Continent.
Portraiture Within Wales, portraiture is not common in the medieval and post-medieval periods, and the Welsh nobility and gentry usually went to London or other English centres to have their portraits painted; many of these remain in Welsh collections. Katheryn of Berain,National Museum of Wales: Katheryn of Berain. Accessed 2 April 2016 who claimed Tudor ancestry and earned the nickname "Mam Gymru" ("Mother of Wales") because of her network of relationships and descendants from four marriages, was painted by Adriaen van Cronenburgh, a Dutch painter. The portrait was commissioned by her husband, Sir Richard Clough, a merchant whose business caused the couple to settle briefly in Antwerp. Clough himself died before he could bring his wife to Plas Clough, the new house he had built for her, near his home town of Denbigh. This features crow-stepped gables in the Flemish style.British Listed Buildings: Plas Clough, Denbigh. Accessed 3 April 2016 The arms of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, of which Clough was a knight, are painted on a plaque, but there are no surviving contemporary portraits of Clough himself.
William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke (died 1570), was one of the first Welsh noblemen known to have collected paintings on a large scale. A portrait of him, dating from the 1560s, is held by the National Museum of Wales; it is attributed to Steven van Harwijck, another Dutch artist.National Museum of Wales – William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke. Accessed 3 April 2016
Later, artisan painters such as William Roos and Hugh Hughes began to seek portrait commissions.National Library of Wales: Paintings and Drawings. Accessed 18 April 2016 Roos's 1835 portrait of preacher Christmas Evans is held by the National Museum of Wales, as is Hughes' 1826 portrait of William Jenkins Rees.Art Collections Online: Hugh Hughes. National Museum of Wales. Accessed 18 April 2016
Landscapes
The best of the few Welsh artists of the 16th to 18th centuries tended to move elsewhere to work, but in the 18th century the dominance of landscape art in English art brought them motives to stay at home, and brought an influx of artists from outside to paint Welsh scenery, which was "discovered" by artists rather earlier than later landscape hotspots like the English Lake District and the Scottish Highlands. The Welsh painter Richard Wilson (1714–1782) is arguably the first major British landscapist, but rather more notable for Italian scenes than Welsh ones, although he did paint several on visits from London.
Wilson's pupil Thomas Jones (1742–1803), has a rather higher status today than in his own time, but mainly for his city scenes painted in Italy, though his The Bard (1774, Cardiff) is a classic work showing the emerging combination of the Celtic Revival and Romanticism.NMOW, Welsh Artists of the 18th Century. Though mainly known as a portraitist, John Downman, born and died in Wales, is also noted for unusually realistic Italian townscape studies, and some Welsh landscapes. He returned to live in Wales on inheriting the family estate, but largely stopped painting. For most visiting artists the main attraction was dramatic mountain scenery, in the new taste for the sublime partly stimulated by Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), though some earlier works were painted in Wales in this strain.Rosenthal, 52–64 Early works tended to see the Welsh mountains through the prism of the 17th century Italianate "wild" landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Gaspard Dughet.Rosenthal, 56
By the 1770s a number of guide books had been published, including Joseph Cradock's Letters from Snowdon (1770) and An Account of Some of the Most Romantic Parts of North Wales (1777). Thomas Pennant wrote Tour in Wales (1778) and Journey to Snowdon (1781/1783); though Welsh himself, Pennant had published a Tour in Scotland first, in 1769.Rosenthal, 61 The first of a series of British tours by another leading promoter of the picturesque, William Gilpin, was Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales, etc. relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770, but not published until 1782. Paul Sandby made his first recorded visit to Wales in 1770, later (1773) touring south Wales with Sir Joseph Banks, resulting in the 1775 publication of XII Views in South Wales and a further 12 views the following year, part of a 48-plate series of aquatints of Welsh views commissioned by Banks. This was an early example of many print series and illustrated books on Wales, often as valuable in terms of income to the artists as original works.
What might fifty years earlier have been merely regarded as inconvenience in travel could now be seen as an exciting adventure worth making the subject of a painting, as in Julius Caesar Ibbetson's Phaeton in a Thunderstorm (1798, now Temple Newsam, Leeds) which shows a carriage struggling up a rough mountain road. It has a label on the back by the artist, recording that the incident occurred when he was travelling in Wales with the artist John "Warwick" Smith and the aristocrat Robert Fulke Greville.Rosenthal, 52 & 54. Image of Phaeton in a Thunderstorm Ibbetson visited Wales often, and was also one of the first artists to record the Welsh Industrial Revolution, and scenes of Welsh life.