J.M.W. Turner — The Sunshine Boy

Dolbadern Castle, North Wales, 1800
oil on canvas
Catering to an emerging taste among Britons for romanticized versions of both their history and their landscapes, Turner provided this scene of a lakeside castle which was in legend once the prison of the Welsh prince Owen Goch. Turner altered the real castle in his image by raising it higher, silhouetting it against the sky and cutting a lonely window to suggest Goch's incarceration.

• Turner Show at the National Gallery : Review