Page 26 - James Ward - A Lioness with a Heron

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Fig. 4

The Society also introduced him to the work of Girtin, one of England’s greatest watercolourists.
Among the few watercolours by Ward that survive is a copy after Girtin’s view of Cayne Waterfall,
Merioneth, North Wales (Fig. 4)29 which shows just how well Ward understood Girtin’s use of an earthy
palette and fluid brushwork to depict a romantic landscape that was nevertheless specific and
topographically accurate. Ward’s slightly later watercolour studies for Gordale Scar (a site which Girtin
also painted) are equally assured, but more expressive than topographical, and show a leaning toward
the sublime rather than the picturesque. We do not know if Ward had first-hand knowledge of Edmund
Burke’s treatise on the Sublime, but there are qualities in Gordale Scar which correspond to Burke’s
theory that the Sublime should be evoked, as a purely subjective emotion, by some real or imagined
threat to self-preservation; by the implied effect of a terrible sound; or by the expression of power.30
Additionally, in his massive canvas Ward showed how he could succeed on his own terms as an painter
of Romantic landscape, not only because he succeeded in painting for the first time on such an epic

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