A view of Snowdon from Capel Curig, North Wales

Many of John Varley's early landscapes show views of Wales, which he visited on a number of sketching tours between 1798 and 1802. He was fascinated by the mountains, and by Snowdon above all, which became a recurring motif in his work throughout his career. The present watercolour seems to have been painted from a very similar viewpoint to that in Snowdon from Capel Curig, circa 1805-10, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and Snowdon from Capel Curig, 1810, in the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery. Varley's early works show the influence of Girtin and tend to be more naturalistic than his later works, in which he refined his compositions to make them more classically harmonious in the manner of Claude Lorrain (circa 1600-1682) and Richard Wilson, R.A. (1714-1782). The elegantly classical tree on the right of the present composition suggests that it belongs to this latter stage of Varley's career.