'Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,/ All the air things wear that build this world of Wales', wrote the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins in ‘The valley of the Elwy’ (1877).

Like Hopkins, Long was inspired by the Conwy Valley in North Wales, where he felt
at one with nature.

Waters, meadows, and vales form the subject of Long’s image of Pont y Garth, North Wales. A small waterfall tumbles into a large pool in a rocky stream that is crossed by a bridge with three stone piers. A hill rises up from the valley and, in the distance, Mount Snowdon is just visible. Long captured the atmosphere of the scene using pure watercolour, and a palette mainly of greens, blues and browns, and leaving the white of the paper to convey the splash of the waterfall.

Pont y Garth is in Llanegryn, Gwynned, in the Conwy Valley near Snowdonia and the coastal towns of Llandudno and Conwy. It is a holiday destination much loved by tourists, with pleasant walks and views nearby.

Artists had delighted in depicting the scenery of Wales for many years. During the Napoleonic wars in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, British artists were no longer able to travel to Europe and so they began to visit scenic sites in Britain in search of subjects. J.M.W. Turner visited North Wales five times from 1790 to 1800 and painted many works there, including several views
of Mount Snowdon and of Conwy Castle.
In subsequent years, other artists such as David Cox followed Turner there.

Long was aware of how the Welsh landscape could inspire, writing ‘If I could get four or five months uninterrupted work in Wales, I am sure I could get a very interesting collection of popular subjects to bring back with me’; and later noting he had obtained ‘a fair amount of sketches in Wales in spite of the rain’ (Long, 2 July 1915 and 9 January 1917).

'Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,/ All the air things wear that build this world of Wales', wrote the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins in ‘The valley of the Elwy’ (1877).

Like Hopkins, Long was inspired by the Conwy Valley in North Wales, where he felt
at one with nature.

Waters, meadows, and vales form the subject of Long’s image of Pont y Garth, North Wales. A small waterfall tumbles into a large pool in a rocky stream that is crossed by a bridge with three stone piers. A hill rises up from the valley and, in the distance, Mount Snowdon is just visible. Long captured the atmosphere of the scene using pure watercolour, and a palette mainly of greens, blues and browns, and leaving the white of the paper to convey the splash of the waterfall.

Pont y Garth is in Llanegryn, Gwynned, in the Conwy Valley near Snowdonia and the coastal towns of Llandudno and Conwy. It is a holiday destination much loved by tourists, with pleasant walks and views nearby.

Artists had delighted in depicting the scenery of Wales for many years. During the Napoleonic wars in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, British artists were no longer able to travel to Europe and so they began to visit scenic sites in Britain in search of subjects. J.M.W. Turner visited North Wales five times from 1790 to 1800 and painted many works there, including several views
of Mount Snowdon and of Conwy Castle.
In subsequent years, other artists such as David Cox followed Turner there.

Long was aware of how the Welsh landscape could inspire, writing ‘If I could get four or five months uninterrupted work in Wales, I am sure I could get a very interesting collection of popular subjects to bring back with me’; and later noting he had obtained ‘a fair amount of sketches in Wales in spite of the rain’ (Long, 2 July 1915 and 9 January 1917).