unknown artist, eighteenth century, Shrewsbury Abbey, ca. 1720
- Title:
- Shrewsbury Abbey
- Date:
- ca. 1720
- Materials & Techniques:
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions:
- 26 1/2 x 71 1/2 inches (67.3 x 181.6 cm)
- Credit Line:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Copyright Status:
- Public Domain
- Accession Number:
- B1981.25.265
- Classification:
- Paintings
- Collection:
- Paintings and Sculpture
- Link to Frame:
- B1981.25.265FR
- Subject Terms:
- abbey | buildings | castle | cattle | fence | field | landscape | meadow | men | pasture | sheep | spire | trees | view | wall
- Associated Places:
- England | Shrewsbury | Shrewsbury Abbey | Shrewsbury Castle | Shropshire | United Kingdom
- Access:
- Not on view
- Link:
- https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:760
- Export:
- XML
- IIIF Manifest:
- JSON
These two sweeping views (27 and 33) celebrate the market town of Shrewsbury, just east of the Welsh border. The panoramic perspective accentuates the town’s role as a source of culture and influence in the broader landscape, highlighting the trade and travel that the river Severn facilitates in one view and the bountiful pastureland and abbey in the other. Shrewsbury Castle, a red sandstone behemoth built along with the abbey in the late eleventh century, is conspicuously absent from both views, suggesting that the castle, in private hands at the time of the painting’s completion, had diminished relevance in comparison to the town’s religious and economic life. Gallery label for Art in Focus: The British Castle - A Symbol in Stone (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-04-07 - 2017-08-06)
Art in Focus : The British Castle - A Symbol in Stone (Yale Center for British Art, 2017-04-07 - 2017-08-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]
Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 32-33, N590.2 A83 (YCBA) [YCBA]
The British Castle : A Symbol in Stone, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2017, pp. 30-32, cat. 33, V2722 (YCBA) [YCBA]
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