Lot 176
Sir Kyffin Williams O.B.E. R.A. (British 1918-2006) §
Rhosgadfan
Auction: 28 April 2023 at 11:00 BST
Description
titled (to reverse), oil on canvas
Dimensions
51cm x 61cm (20in x 24in)
Provenance
Provenance
Purchased directly from the Artist by the family of the present owner.
Footnote
‘Houses are important for an understanding of…[Williams’]…art. They are, of course, Welsh houses but their Welshness is not necessarily part of their meaning. Neo-classical and Georgian houses, with their proportional systems, were designed to frame and show off the human body in doorways, at windows and on balconies….Welsh houses, of the kind noted by the painter, seem however to function as shelters, almost as caves transported into the open air…their walls are thick and their roofing heavy. Such houses open into the fields – small walled tracts dwarfed by the surrounding scenery…Rhosgadfan lies to the southeast of Caernarfon, within a network of small fields. Its inhabitants worked in the slate quarries of Moel Tryfan to the east of the village. In…[the 1998 book]…The Land and the Sea, Kyffin Williams remarks on how ‘paintable’ he has always found the slate tips of Rhosgadfan, Carmel and Cesarea: the forbidding bulk of the tips contrasts with the intimacy of the nearby cottages.’ (Ian Jeffrey and Nicholson Sinclair, 2004)
[Nicholas Sinclair and Ian Jeffrey Sinclair, Kyffin Williams, Lund Humphries, Aldershot, 2004, pp.14 and 103]