Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759-1817)

In July 1792 Julius Caesar Ibbetson accompanied John ‘Warwick’ Smith and Robert Fulke Greville on an extended tour of North Wales, including Anglesey. The lot offered here, Costume of the Peasantry in the Island of Anglesea was probably composed at this time and sums up the sentiment of the period, combining a sense of Welsh culture, history and place - the Welsh peasants in traditional dress standing next to the Iron Age Plas Newyedd with the mountainous Snowdon beyond.
S. Smiles in The Image of Antiquity: Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination, London, 1993, has suggested the present watercolour was engraved as a contribution to James Baker’s Picturesque Guide through Wales and the Marches published in 1794.