A Scene on the Coast, Merionethshire - Storm Passing Off

Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding, 1787–1855, British, A Scene on the Coast, Merionethshire - Storm Passing Off, 1818

Creator:: Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding, 1787–1855
Title:: A Scene on the Coast, Merionethshire - Storm Passing Off
Date:: 1818
Medium:: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:: 53 x 78 1/4 inches (134.6 x 198.8 cm)
Credit Line:: Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:: Public Domain
Accession Number:: B1973.1.16
Classification:: Paintings
Collection:: Paintings and Sculpture
Link to Frame:: B1973.1.16FR
Subject Terms:: castle | cattle | clouds | cows | fortress | landscape | light | marine art | meteorology | mountains | mountains | oxen | ruins | science | storm | sunlight | tower (building division) | trawlers
Associated Places:: Cymru | England | Llanberis | Merioneth | Merionethshire | Tremadoc | United Kingdom | Wales
Access:: Not on view
Note: To make an appointment to see this work, please contact the Paintings and Sculpture department at ycba.paintings@yale.edu. Please visit the Paintings and Sculpture collections page on our website for more details.
Link:: https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:121
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IIIF Manifest:: JSON

Romantic artists celebrated the transcendent beauty of wild, untamed nature. This painting represents Traeth Bychan, near Tremadog, a remote spot on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales. The result is a great hymn to the sublime power of nature. Colonel Grant, a contemporary critic, described this view as “a vast, brooding canvas, lowering in storm and wrought with a brush full charged with thunder.”

Gallery label for Love, Life, Death, and Desire: An Installation of the Center's Collections (Yale Center for British Art, 2020-11-01 – 2021-02-28)

This dramatic depiction of the coast of Snowdonia illustrates Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding’s fascination with the sublime. He illuminates here the Romantic unfamiliarity with which English artists associated Wales. In the painting, Mounts Snowdon and Cader Idris face each other under the heavy, tumultuous sky. The ruin to the center-right is Dolbadern Castle, which in reality is located inland. The artist moved it here to perpetuate the effect of sublimity and add a touch of past human glory to the image of powerful nature. The people in the foreground, like the cattle grazing on the shore, seem to be merely an expression of scale compared to the vast mountains and tall ships

Gallery label for Art in Focus: Wales (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-04-04 - 2014-08-10)

Painted well after Copley Fielding settled permanently in London in 1809, this splendid picture belongs with his most ambitious and grandiose Welsh landscapes. The painting was especially startling in 1819, when Fielding exhibited it at the British Institution, because it was so different from his equally impressive but entirely Claudian, Italianate view of Caernarvon Castle. Between them, the pictures demonstrate Fielding's flamboyant versatility. The critic Colonel Grant described this Merionethshire view as "a vast, brooding canvas, lowering in storm and wrought with a brush full charged with thunder." The location is Traeth Buchan, near Tremadoc.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005

Love, Life, Death, and Desire: An Installation of the Center's Collections (Yale Center for British Art, 2020-10-01 - 2021-02-28) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

Art in Focus : Wales (Yale Center for British Art, 2014-04-04 - 2014-08-10) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Fairest Isle - The Appreciation of British Scenery 1750-1850 (Yale Center for British Art, 1989-04-12 - 1989-06-25) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Oil on Water - Oil Sketches by British Watercolorists (Yale Center for British Art, 1986-08-26 - 1986-11-09) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Presences of Nature - British Landscape 1780-1830 (Yale Center for British Art, 1982-10-20 - 1983-02-27) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

Christie's sale catalogue : Catalogue of ancient & modern pictures : also Pictures by Old Masters and Works of the Early English School : 27 February 1909, Christie's, London, p. 17, lot 100, Fiche B37 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 94-95, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Malcolm Cormack, Oil on water, oil sketches by British watercolorists , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1986, pp. 33-31, fig. 23, ND467 C67 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Megan Cullen, Fairest isle : the appreciation of British scenery, 1750-1850 : [exhibition] label copy. Yale Center for British Art, April 12-June 25, 1989., , Yale Center for British Art, [New Haven, 1989, p. 33, no. 65, ND1354.4 F351 1989 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Fine Arts, Literary Gazette, v. 3, no. 109, February 20, 1819, p. 119, A88 L41+ (SML) [ORBIS]

Algernon Graves, The British Institution, 1806-1867 : a complete dictionary of contributors and their work from the foundation of the institution, Kingsmead Reprints, Bath : UK, p. 186, 1819, no. 84, N5055 B86 G73 1969 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Louis Hawes, Presences of Nature : British Landscape, 1780-1830, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1982, pp. 31, 123-24, no. I.21, pl. 24, ND1354.4 H38 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Paul Joyner, Dolbadarn, studies on a theme , National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1990, pp. 36-37, N8214.5 W2 D65 1990 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Graham Reynolds, Scene and Sensibility, TLS, the Times Literary Supplement, , April 29, 1983, p. 438, TLS Historical Archive [ORBIS]

Duncan Robinson, Fairest isle : the appreciation of British scenery, 1750-1850, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 1989, p. 9, no. 65, ND1354.4 F35 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Yale Center for British Art, Wales, New Haven, 2014, p. 21, V2519 (YCBA) [YCBA]

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