Romantic Wales: Turner and his contemporaries

An exciting new exhibition funded by the Art Fund’s Weston Loan Programme bringing together Welsh landscapes by J M W Turner and other British Romantic artists from collections including the Tate, Amgueddfa Cymru and The National Library of Wales. This will be the first time that one of Turner’s sketchbooks from his early visit to South Wales will be available to view in Carmarthenshire. Displayed alongside it will be other watercolours of the county by the artist including Llandovery Castle and Llanddowror Mill. 

Romantic Wales will explore the artistic response to the political upheaval and industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. It will look at how the Romantic artists travelled to Wales to find inspiration in its dramatic castles, varied rural landscapes and evocative history and legends. Alongside works by Turner inspired by landscapes across Wales there will be paintings by Samuel Palmer, David Cox Sr, Richard Wilson, William Havell and Paul Sandby. 

Prints, journals and travel guides from CofGâr’s own collections will illuminate this fascinating period of artistic and literary history.

The exhibition will also look at how similar cultural and political change in the 20th century brought a new group of ‘Neo-Romantic’ artists to find inspiration in South Wales. On display will be works by John Piper and Graham Sutherland, who were both prolific producers of intense and brooding depictions of the local landscape.