In 1794 the Welsh-speaking artist Edward Pugh (1763-1813), the son of a country barber, published in London a series of six engravings of the area around his home town Ruthin in North East Wales. By focusing on one, the image of a tract of common land on the Flintshire-Denbighshire border, I shall examine the conflicts and compromises involved in making them: between the expectations of a metropolitan audience and the local and provincial nature of the material; between Pugh’s status as an aspiring artisan-class artist and the genteel Welsh squirearchy to which he looked for patronage; between the anti-industrial ideology of the ‘picturesque’ and his concern for the development and modernisation of the Welsh economy; between the grand style to which as a relatively humble artist he did not aspire, and what Henry Fuseli dismissed as ‘tame delineations of a given spot’.

When: Monday 21 June, 12pm

Where: The Refectory, Main Quadrangle, The University of Sydney

Further Information: Email Katherine Anderson or phone (02) 9036 5347.