A Scene on the Coast, Merionethshire - Storm Passing Off

This dramatic depiction of the coast of Snowdonia illustrates Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding’s fascination with the sublime. He illuminates here the Romantic unfamiliarity with which English artists associated Wales. In the painting, Mounts Snowdon and Cader Idris face each other under the heavy, tumultuous sky. The ruin to the center-right is Dolbadern Castle, which in reality is located inland. The artist moved it here to perpetuate the effect of sublimity and add a touch of past human glory to the image of powerful nature. The people in the foreground, like the cattle grazing on the shore, seem to be merely an expression of scale compared to the vast mountains and tall ships