View of Snowdon with the Castle of Dolbadarn from Llanberis

Snowdon rises in the background while Dolbadarn Castle's ruins stand sentinel above the waters of Llanberis in this Welsh landscape from 1787 at Wollaton Hall. Wales offered de Loutherbourg a landscape of medieval ruins, dramatic mountains, and Celtic romance that perfectly suited the emerging Romantic sensibility. Dolbadarn Castle, a thirteenth-century Welsh fortress, would later be painted famously by Turner, but de Loutherbourg's treatment captures the picturesque combination of natural grandeur and architectural decay.

The composition layers castle ruins, lake, and mountain in successive planes of increasing distance and atmospheric softness. De Loutherbourg renders Snowdon's mass with appropriate grandeur, using cool tones and soft edges to suggest its immense scale. The castle ruins receive more detailed treatment, their weathered stone textures providing foreground interest against the broader landscape beyond.