
Penny Day
Head of UK and Ireland
Sold for £37,250 inc. premium
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PROVENANCE:
Acquired directly from the artist by Sir Michael Davies
Thence by descent
EXHIBITED:
London, Royal Academy of Arts, The Two Hundred & Nineteenth Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, 6 June-23 August 1987, cat.no.70
Most likely painted looking west across Snowdonia the present work depicts, from left to right, the mountain peaks of Yr Aran, Y Lliwedd and Snowdon. A familiar location for the artist, here Williams also returns to a preoccupation with the weather; the crisp but wind torn sky dominating almost half the expansive canvas. Williams remarks 'When blowing a gale, the clouds race around the peak (Snowdon) as if in a steeplechase on a very uneven course. They charge over a distant ridge and into a valley only to leap over a nearer one in a wild aerial scramble. I have been brought up among the mountains or in sight of them and although I might not love the cloud I accept them as part of my own landscape and they form an important part of my artistic life.' (Kyffin Williams, The Land & The Sea, Gomer Press and the Arts Council of Wales, 1998, p.86). Shown at the Royal Academy the same year his major retrospective opened at the National Gallery of Wales, Yr Aran epitomises Williams' stylised and persistently modernist approach to his beloved Welsh landscape.
Sir Michael Davies, a regular correspondent and patron of Sir Kyffin Williams throughout the 1980s and Senior Queens Court Judge.