By Luciano Migliaccio
The castle, located in northern Wales, viewed from a rather unusual angle, provided the theme for the wonderful watercolors that Turner exhibited in 1799 and in 1800 at the Royal Academy. The painter executed another watercolor with another view of the castle, in the moonlight, about 1833. The drawing Carnaevon Castle was engraved by W. Radclyffe in the Picturesque Views in England and Wales, published in 1835. To Camesasca, Masp’s painting must belong to this same period, because the shape of the trees is recurrent in the works of the master that were painted about 1830. Finberg notes that the structure of the painting seems, in its details, closer to the first drawings of 1799. It is known that the first owner of the painting, Thomas Henry Liddell, bought it from Turner himself. The painting is in an extremely poor state of conservation and the pictoric material has suffered major damages, probably due to excessive cleaning.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

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