Dyce stayed in the Conwy valley for six weeks in the autumn of 1860 and this picture was painted on his return to London. It is a tightly observed landscape, full of highly detailed vegetation and rock formations, into which the artist introduced two figures of women in folk costume, knitting stockings from scraps of wool gleaned from the hedgerows. It is the artist's only Welsh subject painting, and arguably the only painting by any artist of this period that seeks to apply pre-Raphaelite principles to a Welsh subject.

Provenance

Christie's, 1964; Charlotte Frank; Sir David Scott, 1965; SothebyÂ’s, 2008; private collection. The work has been vetted by the Art Loss Register.