JAMES WARD, R.A. (DERBYSHIRE 1769-1859 HULL)

During the romantic period the journey to Wales from the south and east was along the Wye Valley by boat from Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire to Chepstow in South Wales, during the trip tourists could take in the ruins of Tintern Abbey. William Gilpin made his journey up the Wye Valley in 1770 and published his account of it in 1782. Gilpin thought Tintern the perfect Picturesque setting and the Abbey was painted by both Turner and Girtin. Wordsworth his evocative poem ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour’ in 1798. Ward’s account book records that he made a drawings and sketch of Tintern Abbey in 1814 and he exhibited a picture at the British Institution in 1838, no. 471, which is now in the collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art. However, in the present drawing it is a spire of the Abbey, emerging from an overgrown wilderness that has engaged the artist’s attention, the contrast between nature and the architecture which he has captured.