Parys Copper Mine, Anglesey, North Wales

The French painter and engraver Francia worked primarily in the genre of landscape, developing an aesthetic for dramatic light effects produced by broad washes. In this early drawing, created ten years after he had left France for England, the artist captures the exhilarating experience of the descent into the mine at Parys. An active mine since the Roman period, Parys had become fully industrialized by the end of the eighteenth century with the creation of the Parys Mine Company in 1774. Rich, dark tones convey the atmosphere within the cavernous space, the deepest blacks indicating the plunging depth beneath the planks on which three figures observe miners at work by torchlight. Clearly inspired by Giovanni Battista Piranesi's etched series of the Carceri d'invenzione (Imaginary Prisons), first published in 1749-50 and widely circulated, this drawing captures aspects of Romantic art at the inception of the Industrial age.