Henry Gastineau, OWS The Eagle Tower, Caernarvon Castle by moonlight

Watercolour over traces of pencil with touches of white, gum arabic and scratching out

36.5 x 47.3 cm

Provenance
The Oppé collection, Sotheby’s, 15 July 2016, lot 135 (as British School)

Gastineau made many watercolours of Welsh subjects, some of which were engraved and published as Wales Illustrated in 1830–31. These included another version of this view, showing the Eagle Tower from a slightly different angle: see below. He exhibited two watercolours of Caernarvon Castle at the Old WaterColour Society (OWS), in 1830, no. 356 (possibly the present drawing), and again in 1847, no. 225.

The artist was known for his successful moonlit watercolours, to which according to Roget he gave a characteristic mellowness by means of preliminary washes of warm colour: see J. L. Roget, A History of the Old WaterColour Society, 1891, reprinted 1972, p. 508.