Paul Sandby, RA (1731-1809) [Aw260]
LLANBERIS FALLS NEAR DOLBADARN CASTLE, 1770s
Pen and black ink and watercolour with body colour; signed and inscribed in pen by the artist on the reverse: Cataract near Dolbladeon Castle Lanberis, Caernarvon, Paul Sandby, with pencil notes in the same hand and the artist’s monogram: P.S. (H. 50 cm, W. 34 cm)
Paul Sandby is traditionally regarded as the ‘father’ of English watercolour painting. Although he was not the first artist to specialise in the medium, he did more than any other figure to raise the professional standing of watercolourists. In 1768, he became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts, alongside figures such as Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Like most eighteenth-century watercolourists, Sandby specialised in landscape and travelled frequently in search of subjects. He worked mostly in Windsor and the environs of London, but was among the first British artists to seek out the wild, mountainous terrain of Scotland and Wales.
Sandby first encountered Llanberis Falls, near Mount Snowdon, during a tour of north Wales with his patron, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, in the summer of 1771. The journey offered an opportunity for Sir Watkin to visit his extensive estates, and for Sandby to record the dramatic scenery of the region. A series of twenty-one views from the tour, formerly in the possession of the Wynn family, was sold at Sotheby’s in 2019 and is now in the collection of the National Museum Wales. The series includes a drawing in body colour of Llanberis Falls, closely related to the watercolour at Winchester.
Welsh subjects were an important part of Sandby’s work throughout the 1770s and 1780s. He published four sets of aquatints based on his tours and exhibited numerous Welsh views at the Royal Academy, helping to establish Wales as a popular destination for artists and tourists in search of the picturesque.
Provenance: Agnew’s, London, February 1961; L.G. Duke (1890–1971); Colnaghi, London, March 1964; Major-General Sir John D’Arcy Anderson and Lady Elizabeth Anderson; gift of Lady Anderson, 1993.