Chapter 4 - Watercolour, Extreme Weather, Electricity

Summary

4. Elizabeth Edwards’s essay ‘Watercolour, Extreme Weather, Electricity: Cornelius Varley in North Wales 1802–5’ emphasizes both that domestic tourism shaped knowledge of Britain and Ireland and that forms of artistic practice helped to constitute their subject rather than simply reproducing it. Edwards focuses on the scientifically inspired observations of the self-taught artist Cornelius Varley during his turn-of-the-century Welsh tour, and she shows how he used the medium of watercolour to capture the distinctive atmospheric conditions that he encountered. Varley’s painting helped to enhance the cultural status of watercolour art and at the same time to raise further the profile of Welsh sites and subject matter, already a feature of works displayed at Royal Academy exhibitions. Edwards demonstrates the interplay between the scientific observation of Varley’s travel manuscripts and the visual form of works such as his ‘Mountain Panorama in Wales, Cader Idris’, and she argues that his attention to ‘atmosphere’ made possible related forms of discovery, advancing scientific enquiry in the fields of meteorology and electricity while promoting the tourist appeal of north Wales.