Cylchgronau Cymru

NOTES ON PAUL SANDBY AND HIS PREDECESSORS IN WALES THE following notes are extracted, and recast with corrections and additions, from the earlier part of a lecture read, most kindly, by Dr. Ll. Wyn Griffith on my behalf (owing to my temporary illness) before the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion on 11 December 1957. They comprise the only sections of that lecture which contain matter sufficiently unfamiliar to be worthy of publication in this journal, and I have thought it best to let them appear as individual notes, rather than attempt to shape them, except very loosely, into a continuous narrative which must inevitably, at this stage of our knowledge, be seriously incomplete. Many more landscape or topographical draughtsmen than we know of must have been in Wales before about 1770, which (as will appear later) seems to have been the year of Paul Sandby's first Welsh visit, and from which must be dated the flood of touring English artists who adventured across Offa's Dyke in the late eighteenth century and subsequently. One further preliminary qualification these notes are confined to draughtsmen (in pen, pencil, chalk, or watercolour) who have left behind drawings of the Welsh scene. Oil-paintings and engravings are not, as such, discussed. What are the earliest surviving drawings of Welsh scenes, I do not know. The earliest with which I am acquainted are probably (they are not dated) six drawings which are clearly the work of one artist, presumably (from style) Dutch or Flemish. One of these is in the British Museum, the others in my own collection. This artist has been identified by Mr. Edward Croft-Murray, Keeper of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, as Hendrik Danckerts (b. about 1630, d. after 1679), on the strength of similarity to other drawings in the British Museum (a "Landscape with Rocky Bank" and "Badminton House from the East") which bear old ascriptions to him. All the Welsh drawings attributed to Danckerts are in pen with grey wash. That in the British Museum is inscribed "The river Taff in Glamorganshire", and is a pleasant, bushy 1 In a letter to the Editor, dated 23 October 1961, Mr. lolo A. Williams wrote "O'r diwedd Gorflennais y nodiadau ar ddarlunyddion (draughtsmen?) cynnar yng Nghymru hyd Paul Sandby". The illustrations were chosen by Mr. Williams, and on 23 December he wrote "Dyma bedwar llun arall i'r erthygl. 'R wy'n gobeithio y byddant yn addas iddi". He died on 18 January 1962. It is a great privilege to be able to publish this article in TRANSACTIONS; it is a worthy example of lolo Williams's sound scholarship and acute sensibility. We recall his generous and mature humanitas with gratitude and affection. (I.L1.F.) By IOLO A. Williams1 HENDRIK DANCKERTS