Conway Castle, Caernarvonshire

Conway Castle, Caernarvonshire, painted in 1857 and held in Wolverhampton Art Gallery, depicts one of Edward I's great Welsh castles — built between 1283 and 1289 as part of the English subjugation of Wales — in the context of the estuary and surrounding landscape that made it both militarily powerful and compositionally magnificent. By the nineteenth century Conway Castle had become a canonical picturesque subject, painted by Turner and dozens of subsequent artists drawn by the castle's dramatic silhouette against the sky and its reflection in the tidal Conway River. Cox's 1857 version is a late work — he died in 1859 — and shows the assured handling of a painter at the peak of his atmospheric powers. Wolverhampton Art Gallery's strong Cox holdings make it the logical repository for this significant late work. Cox's approach to Conway Castle was less concerned with the castle's historical symbolism than with its value as a dark mass against light sky and water, an opportunity for pure atmospheric painting.

The castle's distinctive drum towers and crenellated walls provide a powerful silhouette that Cox uses as a dark anchor against the bright estuary. His handling of the tidal Conway River below the castle shows his mastery of reflective water — the castle's reflection in the shallow estuary distorted by current and sandbank patterns. The 1857 date gives this a slightly freer, more sketchlike quality than his mid-career works.