Art Collections Online
Steel Works, Cardiff at Night
WALDEN, Lionel (1861 - 1933)
Date: 1893-97
Media: oil on canvas
Size: 150.8 x 200.4 cm
Acquired: 1920; Gift; Lionel Walden
Accession Number: NMW A 2245
Walden was born in Connecticut and studied in Paris, where he received a medal at the 1903 Salon. He exhibited at the Cardiff Fine Art Society in 1893 and was living near Falmouth in 1897. This painting of 1893–97 is based upon a small oil sketch, also in the collection. It is one of several large industrial and maritime views of Cardiff by the artist. His slightly smaller Les docks de Cardiff was purchased from the Salon des Artistes Français in 1896 and is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
Comments - (14)
Regards,
Peter Wormald.
Thank you very much for contacting us. I'm happy to say that prints of this painting are available from our online shop; please see here.
Best wishes,
Marc
Digital Team
thanks.
Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly. I think I would like a print of the larger work (NMW A 2245).
Kind regards,
Sheila G.
Thank you very much for your comment. I see that you have also requested a print here, at the webpage for Walden's preparatory study for this painting. Could you please confirm that you do in fact want prints of both, or would you rather one or the other? I would then be happy to put you in touch with our image licensing team to have a print made for you.
Kind regards,
Marc
Digital Team
Walden seems to have painted a number of scenes around the area to the north of the docks in Cardiff, which was once a warren of railway lines at different levels between the wharves and the steelworks, and a hive of constant and unrelenting noise and activity. Melanie and Katheline's comment that there is no human activity does not ring true in my interpretation; there is almost nothing in the picture that does not represent human activity at it's most intense and industrious. No human figures are visible, but thousands are toiling in the steelworks, hundreds more on the railway, and more still on the docks and in the many smaller industries and workshops, all of it going flat out on shiftwork and ignoring the gloom and rain.
because of the dark colours in it . The industrial revolution is well evoked with the steam train , the
electricity , the booming activity in the docks. It is at the dawn of progress.
Human life seems to be absent in this painting, which creates a drab atmosphere