Abstract:
This thesis examines the visual depiction of mountain scenery in Snowdonia by
artists, writers, illustrators and photographers from 1750 onwards. The scenery
became associated with particular visual aesthetics. These are the topographical, the
classical, the picturesque and the sublime. Its fundamental point is to demonstrate
how these identities became established via a process of vision and revision. This
study demonstrates the extensive range of visual material that has hitherto remained
unknown. It is essentially a history of the mountain landscape of Snowdonia from the
artist's point of view. Chapter one introduces four aesthetic categories that have been applied to this
mountain scenery. The second chapter examines the role that Richard Wilson played
in the visual establishment of Snowdonia and discusses how his painting came to
serve the needs of the Welsh landed gentry and how, in the late twentieth century, this
imagery is still being used in the promotion of north Wales. Chapter three examines
the topographical aesthetic in relation to Dolbadarn Castle and Snowdon and
demonstrates how this early viewpoint has predominantly retained its topographical
status. Chapter four discusses Snowdon from Capel Curig and examines the classical
identities that have been applied to this view from its first appearance at the Royal
Academy in 1787 to its photographic appropriation in contemporary tourist literature.
Chapter five examines the picturesque viewpoint of the Pont Aberglaslyn in
connection with the tour guide literature, first recorded in the late 1770s but now
ceased. The final chapter discusses the sublime as a mode of vision at the Llyn Idwal
site and the nearby scenery of the Nant Ffrancon pass from the appearance of this
subject at the Royal Academy in the third decade of the nineteenth century.
