Sir Kyffin Williams OBE RA British, 1918-2006
Welsh Blacks, Aberffraw
oil on canvas
20 x 30 "
Sold
Provenance
Private Collection, Thackeray Gallery, 21st May 1987Illustrated Kyffin Williams, The Land & The Sea
Literature
Illustrated Kyffin Williams, The Land & The Sea'A field will always be made to look richer if a herd of Welsh Blacks is grazing on it, for the darkness of their coats increase the intensity of the green; but when I painted this picture the sun was going down over the bay and the grass was turning to a more gentle russet.
Paintings of the Welsh landscape of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often show cattle in the fields or standing in a river, but these are invariably either red or roan in colour. I suppose they must have been shorthorn and possibly a few red Welsh Blacks. This may sound contradictory but the red genes were apt to be dominant until, by careful breeding, the blacks became more common until now in the twentieth century, it is rare for a Welsh Black cow to have a red calf.
Before the war, when I worked for some of the large estates on the Llyn peninsula, I used to attend the sales of pedigree Welsh Blacks in Menai Bridge. One year an estate wanted a new bull, so one was bought and named Nanhoron Helmet. He was a magnificent animal but unfortunately his progeny tended to be red; so one tragic day the noble Nanhoron Helmet breathed his last in the Pwllheli slaughter house.
I have painted many pictures of Welsh Blacks but strangely they have never been successful when in a green field. this painting, I believe, is more successful than any of them.'
