Snowdon from Capel Curig

John Piper's Snowdonia pictures, produced between 1943-1950, have found more universal and consistent acclaim than works characterising any other single period of the artist's varied career. The series was the focus of an important 2012 exhibition, John Piper: The Mountains of Wales (National Museum, Cardiff). In the introduction to the catalogue which accompanied the Cardiff show, David Fraser Jenkins writes 'It was in Snowdonia in the years after the war that John Piper made what many people have thought were the best of all his paintings, in a series that became a graphic exploration of the mountains ... Most of his pictures were drawings rather than paintings, and began as notes in a sketchbook made on the spot in ink with pen and brush'.

This comparatively late, and in some ways modest, example from the series is particularly interesting as the appearance of the colour green (almost completely absent from John Piper's works throughout the 1940s, including the other Snowdonia drawings) marks the very beginning of an evolution of the scope and expressiveness of the artist's palette, an evolution which would be fully manifested by the mid-1950s.

We are very grateful to Rev. Dr Stephen Laird FSA for preparing this catalogue entry.