Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales has acquired two new paintings: View of Margam House, Glamorgan, looking South & View of Margam House, Glamorgan, looking North- after receiving generous grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and the Art Fund. The paintings were purchased by private treaty sale through Sotheby’s for £218,500.
British School, around 1700, South Front Margam House. Oil on canvas. Purchased with the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Art Fund, 2012
Dating back to the early 18th century, they are the only substantial records of one of the great Tudor houses of Wales, which was owned by the Mansel Family – the most important gentry family in Tudor and Stuart Glamorgan. The estate was converted from the buildings of a Cistercian monastery and demolished a century later.
As well as the architecture of the house and the plan of its elaborate baroque gardens, the paintings record the deer in the park, the nearby village, passing travellers on horse and foot, coastal shipping in the Bristol Channel, all set within a prosperous and well-ordered agricultural landscape.
The paintings will be shown in the Museum, where there is a major portrait of the builder of the house, Sir Thomas Mansel with his wife Jane, dating from the 1620s. Amgueddfa Cymru is also committed to a programme of events and a tour exhibition of the paintings across Wales. – www.museumwales.ac.uk