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The rock strewn waters of the Llugwy and thick surrounding woods dominate this vast landscape. The minute size of the figures fishing and sitting by the river emphasises the scale of the scene. The Llugwy flows east from Capel Curig to join the river Conwy at Betws-y-coed. Leader first visited Snowdonia in 1859 and returned many times. He was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, as the meticulous detail of this work suggests. Benjamin Leader was one of the most successful British landscape painters of the second half of the 19th century, and exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1857 until 1904. He first visited North Wales in 1859, staying in Betws-y-Coed, The Conwy valley was to become a favourite sketching ground, as it was for many Victorian painters. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1897, and won medals in the Paris 'Exposition Universelle' of 1889 and the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. The Llugwy joins the Conwy at Betws-y-Coed, and a similar work, dated as late as 1913, was one of three paintings included in the 1913-14 Cardiff 'Exhibition of Works by Certain Modern Artists of Welsh Birth or Extraction'.