J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North Wales 1799-1801 > Drawings Related to the Welsh Tour of > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Destruction of the Bards by Edward I c.1799-1800

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Destruction of the Bards by Edward I’ c.1799-1800
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The Destruction of the Bards by Edward I c.1799–1800
D04168
Turner Bequest LXX Q
Watercolour with stopping-out on white wove paper, 679 x 1000 mm
Watermark ‘J Whatman 1794’
Stamped in black ‘LXX – Q’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This large sheet, which has been known as ‘Scene in the Welsh Mountains with an Army on the March’ is probably an uncompleted watercolour intended for exhibition, illustrating Thomas Gray’s poem The Bard (published 1757) and intended as a pendant to the view of Caernarvon Castle exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800 (Tate D04164; Turner Bequest LXX M).1 Gray’s poem imagines the last of the Bards denouncing Edward and his army as it advances into Wales, and concludes with his suicide.
Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!
Confusion on thy banners wait,
Though fann’d by Conquest’s crimson wing
They mock the air with idle state.
Helm, nor hauberk’s twisted mail,
Nor e’en thy virtues, tyrant, shall avail
To save thy secret soul from nightly fears,
From Cambria’s curse form Cambria’s tears!’
Such were the sounds, that o’er the crested pride
Of the first Edward scatter’d wild dismay,
As down the steep of Snowdon’s shaggy side
He wound with toilsome march his long array.
On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o’er old Conway’s foaming flood,
Robed in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the poet stood;
(Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream’d like a meteor, to the troubled air)
And with a master’s hand, and prophet’s fire,
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
...
Fond impious man, think’st thou, yon sanguine cloud,
Rais’d by thy breath, has quench’d the orb of day?
To-morrow he repairs the golden flood,
And warms the nations with redoubled ray.
Enough for me: with joy I see
The different doom our Fates assign.
Be thine Despair, and sceptred Care,
To triumph, and to die, are mine.
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain’s height,
Deep in the roaring tide he plung’d to endless night.
Turner had evidently read this text with care and sought to represent it as a historical drama set in a specific landscape – the landscape of Snowdonia that he had just explored for himself. As a history picture, executed in the still very unusual medium of watercolour, it was to portray a cast of characters, from the Bard himself, large-scale in the foreground, to the ‘crested pride’ of Edward’s army with its banners and hauberks on its ‘toilsome march’ glinting along the valley bottom, with Snowdon itself rearing above. The separate studies of the bard and other figures (D04165, D04185; Turner Bequest LXX N, h), were made with a view to their inclusion in this subject, on a foreground ‘stage’ formed by a rocky ledge overlooking the valley.
Turner may have known a celebrated depiction of the destruction of the Bards, based on Gray’s poem, by Thomas Jones (1742–1803); see under Tate D04164 (Turner Bequest LXX M). This equates the Bards with the Druids, incorporating Stonehenge into the landscape, but Turner makes no such suggestion. The parallels between his subject and that of Turner’s major painting Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps of 1812 (Tate N00490)2 have been drawn out by Lynn Matteson;3 and there are further similarities with The Battle of Fort Rock, Val d’Aouste, Piedmont, 1796 (Tate D04900; Turner Bequest LXXX G),4 a large watercolour exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815, where an army advances into a violent skirmish on a narrow Alpine road, with the peak of Mont Blanc above. Turner had a little earlier made a watercolour of the same place, seen on a tranquil and light-filled day, with travellers enjoying the view (private collection);5 it perhaps belongs to 1812–14, shortly before the battle scene was exhibited at the Academy.
The pairing of a War subject with one of Peace is a striking anticipation of Turner’s interest in paired subjects later in life, and in particular of the 1842 paintings War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet (Tate N00529)6 and Peace – Burial at Sea (Tate N00528).7
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.329 no.263, pl.52.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.88–90 no.126, pl.131 (colour).
3
See Matteson 1980, pp.392–3.
4
Wilton p.345 no.399, pl.105 (colour).
5
Ibid., p.341 no.369, pl.104, as ?1804, while noting ‘it may have been done somewhat later, perhaps nearer 1810’.
6
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.249 no.400, pl.403 (colour).
7
Ibid., p.248 no.399, pl.402 (colour).
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘The Destruction of the Bards by Edward I c.1799–1800 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-destruction-of-the-bards-by-edward-i-r1180044, accessed 19 April 2024.