SIDNEY RICHARD PERCY (British, 1821-1886). Snowdon, from Above Llyn Llydow, North Wales. Oil on canvas. 24 x 38 inches (...

Description

SIDNEY RICHARD PERCY (British, 1821-1886)
Snowdon, from Above Llyn Llydow, North Wales
Oil on canvas
24 x 38 inches (61.0 x 96.5 cm)
Signed and titled on preserved original handwritten label verso: No. 1 Snowdon, from above Llyn / Llydow, North Wales / Sidney R. Percy

PROVENANCE:
Purchased by present owner from a private collection in England, 1981.

Victorian-era landscapist Sidney Richard Percy, born Sidney Richard Percy Williams in 1821 in London, was a member of the Williams family of painters, who were related to such notable artists as James Ward, R.A. and George Morland. His father, Edward Wiliams, a well-known landscape artist, taught him how to paint; otherwise he received no formal instruction. Although his early paintings were signed "Sidney Williams," he used the name "Percy" from the age of 20 onwards to differentiate himself from the other artists in his family. Percy grew up in Barnes, which today has been consumed into the urban sprawl of London, but during Percy's time was rural countryside. Situated close to the Thames River, the region around Barnes featured quiet marshes beneath windmills, farms where horses pulled plows, and wheel-rutted dirt roads running past country inns or through shaded glens. These were the scenes that the Williams brothers captured on canvas during their early years as painters, but as Sidney Richard Percy matured as a landscape painter he increasingly sought more dramatic inspiration from landscapes in Northern Wales, Devon, Yorkshire, the Lake District and Skye.
Following travels to Venice, Switzerland, Paris, Prussia and Austria, Percy returned home in 1866 and focused his artistic attention on the Welsh countryside, painting in and around the villages of Llanbedr and Arthog, on either side of the Mawddach estuary in Merioneth. The present work is an outstanding example of Percy's ability to record complex scenes of mountains, heather, mists and skies of Northern Wales. Here he presents a view offering a glimpse of the long thin lake of Llyn Llydaw (which in Welsh means "Brittany lake"in Snowdonia National Park. It is located on the flanks of Snowdon, Wales' highest mountain, and one of the most visited lakes in all of the United Kingdom. The Miner's Trail snakes into the middle of the composition while the towering mountains push through the cloud layer where dramatic rings take shape.


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