3-008-555 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Richmond Castle, Yorkshire", by G. Dodgson, in the exhibition of the Society of Painters in Water Colours, 1862. 'We engrave this drawing not only because it is a favourable example of the artist's tender and beautiful execution, but because the oft-painted scene is represented from a new point of view and with a novel effect - that of moonlight. The view is taken from the banks of the Swale below Richmond Castle: the ruin is therefore on the left of the spectator. The shimmering, uncertain effect of moonlight is very happily conveyed by an indefinable stippled tremulousness of touch peculiar to the painter. The leaves tremble and the river flows flickeringly and waveringly in the mellow radiance. The artist must have seen the effect he so well suggests on some July midnight...Richmond Castle, perched so picturesquely on an almost perpendicular rock about 100ft. above the bed of the river, is of rare antiquarian interest. The bold Norman keep of the castle, with its walls nearly 100ft. high and lift, thick, is still almost entire, as we see in our Engraving'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.