Category Archives: Hafod

Idyll and Industry at the National Library

Posted on by
1

by The Curious Scribbler,

The leading exhibit in the Gregynog Gallery is undoubtedly the Canaletto, loaned out for the summer under an initiative to share the National Gallery’s collections with those of us in far flung corners of the UK.

The Stone Mason’s Yard by Canaletto

The Stonemason’s Yard was painted in about 1725 and donated to the National Gallery by Sir Thomas Beaumont a hundred years later.  It depicts an early morning scene in  a lesser square the Campo San Vidal.  The rising sun casts long shadows across the scene and, as the accompanying caption describes, there is much human activity going on.  There are gondolas and gondoliers on the Grand Canal, and women attending two lines of washing  in the middle distance. The foreground shows women engaged in traditional activities – housework, spinning and childcare.  At centre are the stone carving activities, a man with a mallet  and chisel is carving a large block of limestone, while another with his back to us is splitting stone into pavier slabs. But the third stone mason on the right of the picture is the one who caught my attention, for here, working on the interior of a huge freshly carved basin or well head is undoubtedly a burly woman.  It is unexpected to find a woman mason, but it appears that Canaletto painted what he saw.  Surprisingly  she is not mentioned in the caption.

The lady stonemason

The rest of the exhibition is spread out to either side,  Turn right for ‘Idyll’  scenes of rural Welsh landscape in paintings in the collections of the National Library, or turn left for ‘Industry’, –  iron works, mines and quarries depicted over two centuries.  Adjoining the industrial views are also a few abstracts, so abstract that only the initiated would know that they are about Wales.  I’ve learnt a useful expression –  ” deeply personal response”  is a good description for baffling representations of named locations!

Among the more representational works, are pictures by Turner, Ibbotson, Richard Wilson, Thomas Jones of Pencerrig, David Cox and other well-known artists.   For locals like me it was interesting to see a 1955 painting of Hafod by Joyce Fitzwilliams of Cilgwn, Newcastle Emlyn. The house is party roofless and viewed I think from the path up towards Pendre cottage.  Demolition of the Italianate wing added by Henry de Hoghton has already begun.

Joyce Fitzwilliams’ Hafod 1955

Also of local interest was a painting by  World War I Belgian refugee Valerius de Saedeleer of the land dipping down to the sea, probably near of Llanrhystud.

Valerius de Saedeleer Coastal landscape near Aberystwyth painted during WWI

Turning to the industrial side  there are some powerful images such as Miners returning from Work by Archie Rhys Griffiths, a depression-era painting which nonetheless evokes the grandeur of toil.  Many of the more  recent industrial views  are more grim or dismal in tone.

Archie Rhys Griffiths 1932 Miners returning from work

But my eye was caught by a work by Penry Williams, thought to depict the Dowlais Iron works. Like the Canaletto, the scene is bright and lucid, with long shadows cast across a foreground of great activity.  The bare grassy uplands gleam in the background with neat fields and scattered farmhouses on the slopes, while lurking in full view is the industrial behemoth.  Four tall chimneys, five flaming beacons, long sheds with with rows of chimneys each emitting a gleam of fire and puffs of white smoke.  Everything is neat and new and sharply designed.  The tall chimneys have ornamental tiers, and a huge sphere on a stone pedestal indicates an owner of wealth and  discernment.  Doubtless many men worked perspiring in the heat of these sheds, but the only humans we see are two top hatted gentlemen on horseback and a gardener with his wheelbarrow, meticulously edging a broad graveled path through the immaculate garden which adjoins the works.

Penry Williams’ evocation of industrial glory in the early 19th century

There came a time when industrialists moved away from their factories to unspoilt rural locations, sometimes donating their former parks to the people, but in the early 19th century one can sense the excitement of new industry bringing huge rewards to the iron masters, and new jobs to the rural poor.  Penry Williams came from a modest family of stonemasons in Merthyr Tydfil.  Without the patronage of the newly enriched iron masters he would never have studied at the Royal Academy or  settled in Rome to pursue a career painting Italian scenes for young gentlemen on the Grand Tour.

Artists at Hafod

Posted on by
Reply

by The Curious Scribbler

Hafod has an illustrious history of landscape artists.  In 1798 J.W. Turner painted the original house glowing in sunshine beneath an exaggerated mountain wreathed in cloud.  J. ‘Warwick’ Smith painted a series of views which were later published as handsome aquatints in A Tour to Hafod by J.E. Smith, in 1810.   Many of these images are familiar to  us as postcards  – especially The Peiran Falls in spate, gushing either side of the central outcrop, the Cascade Cavern approached in those days by a three gentlefolk and a dog who have just crossed a long lost rustic bridge, the meadow with resting cows by the river.    Rarer but equally choice are the elegant views baked onto  Derby Porcelain to create the Hafod dinner service for Thomas Johnes in 1787.

Items from this service occasionally appear on the antiques market.  The largest collection of about twenty  pieces is on display  at the the national Museum in Cardiff.

A plate from the Hafod service

The following centuries have seen many further artists’ contributions,  ranging through  talented 19th century tourists and at perhaps the lowest point in its history, the 20th century artist John Piper.  His scratchy impressionistic views of the Ystwyth Gorge gave The Hafod Trust the only clear basis on which to reconstruct the  dilapidated pillars of the Gothic Arcade above the river.

In the last five years two new artists have been annually introduced to Hafod courtesy of a residency offered through the Royal Drawing School.  The successful applicants, all graduates of the School,  live for two weeks in the holiday cottage Pwll Pendre, and explore, paint and draw on the estate.   This afternoon I went to meet this year’s two artists Yiwei Xu and Iona Roberts at an exhibition of their work in their temporary studio in the Hafod Stables.   Tacked to the wall were paintings and sketches inspired at Hafod, some finished, others to be worked up into finished pieces when they return home. Both had perspectives on some of the same views.

Yiwei Xu ( left) and Iona Roberts ( right) Artists in residence at Hafod 2023

Yiwei was deeply impressed with the beauty and wilderness of Hafod and concentrated colorfully on the busy matrices of branches and tree trunks and rock.   She told me she  had never previously been so far from the urban experience.  She had painted in London parks  but was greatly delighted with the lone Sequiodendron gigantea which stands near the walled kitchen garden, placing it centrally in one of her larger pictures. Another view showed the Gothic Arcade perched above the gorge.

Yiwei Zu’s picture wall

 

Three of Yiwei Xu colourful views of Hafod

The Sequoidendron appeared in Iona’s pictures too, with the mountains delicately delineated behind. The Gothic Arcade also  loomed indistinctly amongst dappled black and white foliage further dappled by  actual raindrops falling on the paper while she worked.  Intricate fine brushwork characterized many of her sketches and I was particularly taken with two black and white views taken from the bastion on the drive which overlooks the Ystwyth and lead the eye upward to the bald mountain to the east.  She had also done  colourful oil paintings of Hafod church and Pwll Pendre cottage in a busy landcape. Iona  currently teaches at the Glasgow School of Art, and will be doing another residency in the autumn at Dumfries House in Ayrshire.

Ioan Roberts’ picture wall

Two views up the Ystwyth at Hafod by Iona Roberts

The residency was begun six years ago by the Hafod Trust.  The new guardians of Hafod, the National Trust, intend to continue the tradition and it is hoped that in due course an exhibition of  contemporary artists’ work on Hafod will be put together, and the Royal Drawing School artists will be among the exhibitors.