Paintings

Abandoned Communities ..... Paintings

Paintings displayed in this section show towns, villages, farming communities, and mining communities before and after they were abandoned.

If you know of a painting of an abandoned community, or better still have a painting done by yourself, then please press Contact.

J M W Turner, Dunwich
Painted c. 1830. Note that Turner has rotated All Saints Church 180 degrees, so that the tower appears to hang over the cliff - compare the scene with the photograph at the top of my home page.

J Constable, Old Sarum
Oil on canvas, painted in 1829. The painting is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

J Constable, Old Sarum
Watercolour, painted in 1834.

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W Lidstone, Hallsands

Painted in 1869. In those days the fishermen shared the beach with women knitting. The picture can be seen at the Cookworthy Museum, Kingsbridge, Devon.

James Clarke Hook, Hallsands

Painted about 1854, over forty years before the dredging began. The painting is in the Orchar Art Gallery, Dundee

James Dickson Innes, Tryweryn Valley
Probably painted in 1911, when James Dickson Innes was staying in North Wales with Augustus John. The painting is kept at Parc Howard Museum, Llanelli, but is not always on public display.

Edward Donovan, Kenfig (image supplied by John Ball)

This is a plate in Donovan’s book Excursions through South Wales and Monmouthshire, published in 1805. To the south of the remains of Kenfig Castle you can see the sand dunes, the Severn Sea, and the coast of Somerset.

During 2009 Andrew Cheetham was artist in residence at Rosedale. The ironmining and railway community in Rosedale came to an end in 1929. Here are copies of two of Andrew Cheetham’s charcoal drawings.

In the section on Central Silvertown I have mentioned three paintings by Graham Sutherland. One of Sutherland’s paintings, An East End Street 1941, is reproduced on the Tate Britain website.

The West Kilns

Florence Terrace

Claudia Williams has produced a wonderful series of paintings about the evacuation of people from the Tryweryn valley in 1963. The story of Tryweryn and other Welsh communities removed in order to create reservoirs is told in the section of this website on Welsh Reservoirs. In her paintings Claudia Williams has portrayed the psychological effects experienced by the people of the Tryweryn valley as they gradually came to understand that they would have to move, at the time of the protest in Liverpool, and on the day of evacuation. Three of her paintings are reproduced here. Others can be seen in the section on Welsh Reservoirs. The original paintings are on sale at the Martin Tinney Gallery, and I am grateful to the Gallery for permission to reproduce some of them.

What does it say?

Unpleasant dreams

Moving from the house of memories

Joy Green, Echoes (image supplied by Ray Castell)

Joy Green has also done a series of paintings of Rosedale, the series having the title Exploited Land. The painting reproduced here shows the railway track running along the east side of the dale, with a ventilation chimney on the hillside. It gets its texture from grit gathered from a spoil heap at Rosedale.

Here are some coloured drawings of Snap in Wiltshire, produced by Michael Riggs. The original sketches were done during a visit to Snap on 12 May 2019.