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After practicing as an artist for fifteen years, in 1986 Peter Lord turned to researching Welsh art history. Having published widely on the subject, broadcast on television and radio, and curated countless exhibitions, all through the medium of Welsh and English, Peter has for some time been considered the leading authority on the visual culture of Wales. Peter is also a collector, who has amassed a nationally significant collection of Welsh artworks, which very intentionally ranges from pieces which would be considered ‘high art’ to artisan pieces and schemes of visual culture.

Peter has made it his life’s mission to challenge the myth that there is “no Welsh art”, a claim which originated in 1950 with the Welsh novelist Llewelyn Wyn Griffith (1890-1977), who stated “so much for the past. No patron, no critic, therefore no painter, no sculptor, no Welsh Art. It is as simple as that”, when he was Chair of the Welsh committee of the then Arts Council of Great Britain. This is the quote that greets you on the threshold of the exhibition, printed on the wall above a painting of Griffith by Kyffin Williams (1918-2006). Visitors then proceed into the Gregynog Gallery where this statement is cleverly deconstructed, with separate sections on “patron”, “critic” and “artists”.

The section on critics is essentially a historiography of Welsh art, which shows that when Griffith made his statement in his position of influence in 1950, he was only reinforcing a long and widely-held belief that there was no such thing as Welsh art. During the guided tour I attended, Peter explained how this sentiment got into the Welsh national psyche - “if you tell people something often enough, time and time again, they’ll believe it”. The repercussions can still be felt today, in the devaluation of Welsh pieces at auction and the fact that Wales still doesn’t have its own national gallery of art.

The “patron” section of the exhibition is sub-divided into gentry patronage, middle class patronage and art by and for the gwerin or common people of Wales. Of particular interest to us at ISWE – a national research centre which exists to enhance understanding of the role of estates and country houses in the histories, cultures and landscapes of Wales – is the section which considers gentry patronage, and I was fortunate enough to spend an hour here with Peter before the tour. Peter has been exploring the visual world of the Welsh gentry for decades; in fact, his book Imaging the Nation, part of a three-volume series entitled The Visual Culture of Wales published by University of Wales Press in 2000-03, is included on ISWE’s Suggested Reading List as essential reading for anyone interested in landed estates in Wales. Many Welsh gentry families had collections of portraits, both individual and group portraits, which extended over several generations and therefore expressed the family’s noble linage and longevity. Peter pointed out that there was a particular emphasis on commissioning portraits to mark significant family events such as marriages, births and heirs' coming-of-age celebrations. While many of these collections have been dispersed, this model of bringing artworks from a national collection together with artworks from a private collection has the potential to reunite families! Here a portrait of the seventeenth-century Bevis Thelwall (of the Bathafarn family, Denbighshire) by Gilbert Jackson from the National Art Collection is displayed next to a portrait of the nineteenth-century Bevis Thelwall (of Brynffynnon) by John Cambrian Rowland from Peter’s collection.

With my personal research interest in the architectural history of the Welsh gentry/country house, I was particularly drawn to two paintings depicting Bodelwyddan in Flintshire, ancestral home of the Williams family, and Cefn Mabli in Glamorgan, ancestral home of the Kemeys family. The fact that the Welsh gentry commissioned and displayed paintings of their ancestral houses demonstrates that these were also seen as a physical manifestation of a family’s longevity and continuity.

However, Peter’s objective with this section of the exhibition was to show that Welsh gentry patronage was not just one-dimensional; that as well as ‘high society’ portraits by internationally-renowned painters, the Welsh gentry were also actively commissioning work by Welsh painters who had trained in London and Italy such as Richard Wilson (1714-1782), William Parry (1743-1791) and Hugh Hughes (1790-1863), as well as work by local artisans. In order to make this point, Peter cleverly juxtaposes a c.1765 portrait of Robert Wynne of Garthewin (1732-1798), painted in Bath by Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), one of the most renowned British artists of the second half of the eighteenth century, with a wooden panel painted by an unnamed local artisan in 1787 to mark the coming-of-age of Wynne’s son, which includes Welsh language englynion. Such panels were ephemeral objects, intended to be displayed during an event such as a ball or banquet; in fact, x-ray examination of this particular panel has revealed that the coming-of-age image was painted over an earlier work, an urn to mark a funeral. Peter explains that this symbolic painting was almost certainly the work of the Walters family of artisans of Denbigh, also responsible for the servants’ portraits at Erddig.

A collection of paintings from the Gogerddan estate is particularly interesting as it depicts the daily lives of the Pryse family, an old Welsh family rooted in the old county of Cardiganshire. In one painting of 1863 by an unknown artist, Jane Pryse prepares to board her carriage and embark on a social engagement, accompanied by her coachman and surrounded by her dogs. Other paintings depict the Gogerddan Hunt and a horse named Magpie in the stables, demonstrating how hunting was one of the Pryce family's core activities. With further research, this collection has much to tell us about the inner lives of the Welsh gentry.

Elsewhere in this section of the exhibition on gentry patronage, Peter addresses the fashion for landscape painting and travel in Wales among the English gentry in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, demonstrating that this fashion was heavily influenced by the activities of the Welsh gentry in the preceding quarter-century. One of the most striking works on display is a c.1771 painting of Castell Dinas Brân, Llangollen, Denbighshire, by Richard Wilson - a smaller version of a much larger painting, or possibly a preparatory sketch. This was commissioned by Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 4^th Baronet (1749-1789) on returning to Wales from his grand tour of Italy, where he had identified parallels between ancient Rome and ancient Britain. The intention was to depict Dinas Brân, a native Welsh castle and therefore a site of mythic and historic importance, in the Classical tradition. The completed painting hung in Sir Watkin’s London house where it was seen by his English counterparts in fashionable society, and surely aroused their interest in the rugged, Picturesque landscapes of north Wales. It is particularly interesting to compare this painting, which depicts the Welsh landscape in the Classical tradition, as not just a setting but a subject worthy of attention in itself, with the painting of The Gogerddan Hunt, in which the Pryse family and their party are depicted in the Welsh landscape, and to consider what this can tell us about Welsh gentry identities. Sir Watkin also employed the English painter Paul Sandby (1731-1809) to tutor him in drawing, and the pair toured Eryri together in 1771. The paintings produced by Sandby during this trip were also highly influential in English circles. Peter also credits the Welsh naturalist and antiquarian Thomas Pennant (1726-1798), who came from the gentry family of Downing in Whitford, Flintshire, for bringing the romantic landscapes of north Wales to the attention of English travellers with his publications Tour in Wales (1773) and A Journey to Snowdon (1781), illustrated by Moses Griffith (1747-1819).

Elsewhere in the exhibition, it was interesting to see the ways in which some Welsh gentry figures were commodified, in mass-produced engravings and pub signs, for example. A portrait of Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn, 5^th Baronet (1772-1840) by English artist Albin Roberts Burt (1783-1842) was accompanied by an engraved version by the same artist. While Burt would not have been paid for his work on the original portrait, he made his money from sales of the engraved version. In the section of the exhibition on art by and for common people in Wales, there is an 1832 painting of William Henry Paget, 1^st Marquess of Anglesey (1768-1854) by sixteen-year-old John Roberts of Caernarfon. Peter’s research has found that this painting was a copy of a pub sign, which in turn was copied from an engraving. These works show the sense of celebrity which surrounded some Welsh gentry figures, in local and national spheres.

‘No Welsh Art’ runs until 6th September 2025 and Peter Lord is leading on the 2^nd of July and the 3^rd of September, as well as tours for blind or partially sighted visitors on the 20^th of August. There is also an upcoming series of ‘In Focus’ presentations exploring themes such as art and poetry; art, politics and protest; art and identity. ISWE would like to express our congratulations to Peter Lord for curating this wonderful exhibition, and to thank him for giving his time so generously.