1942
watercolor
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
The Oakley Slate Quarry at Blaenau Festiniog, Merionethshire is a 1942 watercolor by Frances Macdonald, a British Romanticism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
This painting shows a quiet valley with a big, steep hillside being dug up. Sheep graze in the foreground, and a small village sits at the bottom near a fence. The sky is light, with soft clouds, and the hills are a mix of brown and green. The artist focused on how the quarry changes the land—notice the sharp lines where the rock is cut. It looks like a snapshot of work and nature side by side. If you like this, check out the Victoria and Albert Museum for more pieces like it.
A watercolour by Frances Macdonald from 1942, this work depicts the terraced slopes and spoil heaps of the Oakley Slate Quarry near Blaenau Festiniog in Merionethshire, with sheep grazing on a grassy verge in the foreground. The painting was created as part of the Recording Britain project, a wartime initiative funded by the Pilgrim Trust and directed by Sir Kenneth Clark, which commissioned artists to document landscapes, industries, and buildings across England, Wales, and Scotland to preserve a record of places and ways of life perceived to be at risk. The scheme aimed to counter concerns…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Frances Macdonald MacNair (24 August 1873 – 12 December 1921) was a Scottish artist whose design work was a prominent feature of the Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style) during the 1890s.
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