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Lot Essay
'Punished by wind the poplars bend,
All angles under cloudless sky,
Screening the small farms that defend
The inheritance of a century
"God made the world," they said. "The blast
Of gales cannot diminish it.
But God made Patagonia last,
And was too tired to finish it."
Bare-handed immigrants, they faced
Despair and shaped an age to come;
Brought water to the primeval waste
And made the thornscrub desert bloom.
At nightfall when the poplars frame
The Southern Cross, the uncaring stars,
Here, where the desert was, I name
Those people as my ancestors.'
(Poem by John Ormond, as quoted in the exhibition catalogue, Kyffin Williams, London, Leicester Galleries, 1970, unpaginated).
Kyffin Williams wrote of his time in Patagonia, 'I went to Welsh Patagonia purely to record the land, the people and the natural history, much as an eighteenth-century watercolourist would have done. I never intended to produce works of art but if this did happen by chance, it was all to the good.'
(Exhibition catalogue, Kyffin Williams, London, Leicester Galleries, 1970, unpaginated).
All angles under cloudless sky,
Screening the small farms that defend
The inheritance of a century
"God made the world," they said. "The blast
Of gales cannot diminish it.
But God made Patagonia last,
And was too tired to finish it."
Bare-handed immigrants, they faced
Despair and shaped an age to come;
Brought water to the primeval waste
And made the thornscrub desert bloom.
At nightfall when the poplars frame
The Southern Cross, the uncaring stars,
Here, where the desert was, I name
Those people as my ancestors.'
(Poem by John Ormond, as quoted in the exhibition catalogue, Kyffin Williams, London, Leicester Galleries, 1970, unpaginated).
Kyffin Williams wrote of his time in Patagonia, 'I went to Welsh Patagonia purely to record the land, the people and the natural history, much as an eighteenth-century watercolourist would have done. I never intended to produce works of art but if this did happen by chance, it was all to the good.'
(Exhibition catalogue, Kyffin Williams, London, Leicester Galleries, 1970, unpaginated).