Dinas Betws-Y-Coed

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: Other
    City: other locations abroad

    This highly evocative rocky landscape includes an array of grasses, wild flowers, mosses and shrubs. The Welsh word ‘Dinas’ means city, fortress or stronghold, while ‘Betws-y-Coed’ translates as ‘prayer house in the wood’ and is the name of a village in the Snowdonia National Park in North Wales. In the 19th century the mountainous landscape around the village of Betws-y-Coed was a popular subject for artists such as Benjamin William Leader (1831–1923), Frederick Waters Watts (1800–1862) and David Cox (1783–1859). 

  • About the artist
    Frederick Henry Henshaw, landscape painter, came from Birmingham. His work was greatly influenced by J. M. W. Turner. By 1829, Henshaw was living at 13 Charlotte Street, London. Between 1837 and 1840 he travelled in Germany, Switzerland and Italy. However, his paintings are mostly British landscape views in the Midlands, Wales and Scotland. Henshaw exhibited in London at the Royal Academy, the British Institution and the Society of British Artists in Suffolk Street, between 1829 and 1864. He also exhibited at the Birmingham Society of Artists. He occasionally collaborated with another painter, R. J. Hammond. Today, paintings by Henshaw are in the collections of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and Glasgow Art Gallery.
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  • Details
    Title
    Dinas Betws-Y-Coed
    Date
    1851
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    height: 71.00 cm, width: 91.50 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Christie's, 15 October 1976
    Inscription
    br: F. H. Henshaw / Dinas Betwys-y-Coed / N. Wales / 1851.
    Provenance
    Sold though Christie's, London, 'Fine Victorian Pictures' sale, on 15 October 1976 (Lot 187), as 'Dinas Bettws-Y-Coed'; from which sale purchased by the Department of the Environment
    GAC number
    12495