Goodrich Castle on the Wye
Description:
The ruins of Goodrich Castle sit perched on a hill near the center of the piece. Three boats full of people, ostensibly tourists, row down the river which bends sharply to the left. The central hill is flanked by a smaller hill on the left and a larger hill on the right. It appears that both the right and center hills are wooded, while the left hill is not. Two thin columns of smoke rise from the cover of trees on the center hill. The sky is mostly clear, with some clouds above the left hill, and the river is calm.
Copyright:
Copyright, 2009, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Location:
Accession Number:
B1975.3.1027
Height (in centimeters):
23
Width (in centimeters):
31
Associated Events
The Wye Tour and the PicturesqueAssociated Places
Goodrich CastleAssociated Texts
Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; Made in the Summer of the Year 1770 by William Gilpin (1782)Till bold, impressive, and sublime,Note how the ruins of Goodrich Castle are capable of telling “noble truths,” a direct interaction that Gilpin et alia would have either not noticed or summarily dismissed. Other passages focusing on the direct effect of natural images on the viewer include the following:Gleam’d all that’s left by storms and timeOf GOODRICH TOWERS. The mould’ring pileTells noble truths,—but dies the while.(Bloomfield 1.149-52)
Then CHEPSTOW’S ruin’d fortress caughtandThe mind’s collected store of thought,A dark, majestic, jealous frownHung on his brow, and warn’d us down.(Bloomfield 2.315-18)
TINTERN, thy name shall hence sustainThe first of these passages features not only personification of Chepstow Castle, but also describes the ruins’ ability to catch “the mind’s collected store of thought,” as well as its capacity to “warn” viewers. This warning is likely related to mortality, given the nearby mention of the “setting sun” (Bloomfield 2.313), a typical symbol of waning life. The second passage also utilizes one of the Wye Tour’s most famous spectacles (Tintern Abbey) to illustrate scenery’s ability to influence the viewer. The mere name of the Abbey is enough to call to the poet’s mind “a thousand raptures,” some of which included “priest[s] or king[s]” (2.124), “some BLOOD-STAIN’D warrior’s ghost” (2.125), or “grass-grown mansions of the dead” (2.114). The capacity of Nature to wreak such significant alterations in a viewer’s psyche runs diametrically opposed to the strictly evaluative eye of the picturesque tourist, and embodies a decidedly post-“Lines” worldview.A thousand raptures in my brain;Joys, full of soul, all strength, all eye,That cannot fade, that cannot die.(Bloomfield 2.131-34)
Subject
This image features a view of Goodrich Castle from the river Wye, and so recreates for us the perspective of the tourists depicted in the boats on the river. The work aims to recreate its subject in "topographical" detail (Fenwick); this aspiration suggests that the natural scene itself, deemed "correctly Picturesque" by William Gilpin, rendered improvisation unnecessary (Gilpin 7).Theme
Ruin. River. Picturesque. Goodrich Castle. Castle. Wye.Significance
This work is not so much an examination of the effects of the picturesque on a human subject as it is a topographical recreation of a striking scene. It should not be surprising, then, that the painting was executed before Wordsworth published his “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye Valley During a Tour, July 13, 1798," and thus before the subsequent “new phase in man’s relationship with the natural world” (Andrews, In Search of the Picturesque 86). Consequently, we can safely align Hearne's piece more with Gilpin’s analytical interests than with Wordsworth’s tendency to champion personal examination over natural detail; later Romantic concerns about the impact of the scene on the viewer are not deeply explored. Instead, the work aims to create a sense of general awe in the viewer by introducing sublime imagery in the sheer, objective size of the cliffs, emphasized by the relatively small size of the human figures in the boats. Beginning with this difference in size, the work further piques the viewer’s interest by creating contrast in shapes and colors; such contrast is the hallmark of the Romantic notion of the picturesque, a key innovation of Romantic visual culture. The picturesque is also represented in this work through images which contrast the natural and human worlds by means of their interaction: the smoke issuing from the forest; the woods overgrowing the castle ruins; and the tourists navigating the river.Bibliography
Andrews, Malcolm. “Gilpin, William (1724–1804).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 28 Mar. 2009.Long Title
Thomas Hearne, 1744-1817/ Goodrich Castle on the Wye/ c. 1785/ Watercolor, pen and black ink, touches of white chalk, over graphite on wove paper/ 8 7/8 x 12 5/16in. (22.5 x 31.3cm)/ Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection/ B1975.3.1027Featured in Exhibit:
From the Collection:
Painter:
Image Date:
1785