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Conway Castle, North Wales

Creator

British Artist · 1775–1851

Joseph Mallord William Turner's father, a barber and wigmaker, realized his son's artistic talents early, asserting that "my son is going to be a painter." Before enrolling in the Royal Academy, Turner gained some drawing experience in the offices several of London's leading architects. He first exhibited watercolors of architectural subjects and then experimented with scenes from literature and s

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Date: 1798
Medium: Watercolor and gum arabic with graphite underdrawing
Culture: British
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

On a dramatic, rocky area of the northern coast of Wales looms the late medieval Conway Castle. It towers over a stormy bay while fisherman struggle to pull their boats ashore. Caught in this uproaring of the sea, the tiny figures of fishermen in their boat convey a sense of humans' barely significant place in the order of the universe. The Welsh landscape exerted a strong hold on Joseph Mallord William Turner, and he made several sketching trips there in the 1790s. In this early Romantic painting, Turner represented the dramatic effects of natural light, allowing sunshine breaking through the clouds to illuminate the castle and the coast beyond.

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