Alex McKay's Wye Tour: Claude Mirror Images from Ross-on-Wye to Chepstow, 2001-2007ALEX MCKAY’S WYE TOUR
Claude Mirror Images from Ross-on-Wye to Chepstow, 2001-2007
The images by Alex McKay in this digital slideshow were taken photographically through a Claude mirror, a popular, Romantic-era optical device. The use and influence of the instrument is explained in “An Eye Made Quiet”: The Claude Mirror & the Picturesque.
Alex McKay is a Canadian, multi-disciplinary artist who has long investigated issues of exploration, landscape and identity. His present work on the Claude mirror was inspired by an unpublished eighteenth-century manuscript at the Yale Center for British Art documenting a boat tour down the Lower Wye. This manuscript contains elliptical watercolor illustrations that reminded McKay of a Claude mirror he had seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He contemplated a similar voyage down the Wye; but unable at the time to purchase a rare period mirror, McKay began the research that would allow him to manufacture his own in a variety of shapes and extraordinary sizes.
Claude mirrors make a “raw” view look like an eighteenth-century landscape painting. There are many correspondences between McKay’s photographs and the prints and illustrations throughout the exhibition. (Look particularly at Haghe’s lithograph of Chepstow Castle, and look for McKay’s view from the same spot!) Not only do Claude mirrors provide assistance for those composing pictures and sketching scenery, but they express a great deal about the priorities of viewers in the period. The Claude mirror helps tourists of the picturesque discover what they long to see.
What was intended to be one canoe trip down the Wye evolved into a sustained project, resulting in the creation of Claude mirror images taken from many locations in North America and Britain, complex installations and various research fellowships. Over the course of seven years, guided by historical images and travel narratives, Ordnance Survey maps and locals acting as guides, McKay has re-traced the steps of many Romantic tourists and artists in the Lower Wye. Although McKay’s work involves finding and responding to canonical views and their historical representations, his work reaches well beyond simple reproduction.
After many epiphanic moments with the device, McKay took a different approach, coupling the mirror with twenty first-century web-based technology. He installed a 42" Claude mirror-variant on the grounds of the Abbey Hotel, Tintern (formerly the Beaufort Arms) to reflect the south-west facade of the ruin. This vantage point has been favored by generations of artists. A high resolution webcam streams the view onto the Web. McKay has paired an instrument of Romantic transcription with an instrument of modern-day surveillance.
The Tintern installation has greatly increased our understanding of the mirror’s effects: how it transforms perspective, depth perception and scale; and how it responds to variable weather conditions and the hourly, daily, seasonal qualities of light in this region. We have been allowed to witness over time what no individual could endure—thousands of hours standing in the same spot with a mirror in hand. It has also created a stir within a global, web-based audience. Mr. Andy Williams, producer at BBC South Wales which hosted the site, has said that the web installation brings Tintern Abbey to a whole new constituency of viewer. Mr. Richard Turner of the Welsh heritage organization Cadw, whose enviable title is “Inspector of Ancient Monuments”, is currently assisting with plans to move the installation onto Cadw property.
McKay’s Claude mirror images record thirteen of the scenic stations between Ross-on-Wye and Chepstow. This forty-mile stretch of river was the most popular segment of the Wye tour (see “Thoughts of More Deep Seclusion”: The Wye Tour), especially after the publication of Gilpin’s illustrated Observations on the River Wye. McKay’s images, arranged as they would “successively occur” during a descent of the Wye, show not just the places, but a way of seeing and meditating upon place. At the heart of McKay’s work is the sense of the uncanny that the mirror produces. What it reflects seems familiar even if the landscape is not.
This tour of Wye stations is followed by a visual chapter revisiting Tintern Abbey. The images in this portion of the slide-show were selected from hundreds of thousands recorded with the webcam since 2006. Like Charles Heath, McKay can say “it has been...[a] pleasure to have viewed [Tintern Abbey] under every variation and change of the season, as well as times of the day”. Further information about Alex McKay’s work and the Claude mirror may be found at the website www.claudemirror.com.
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Alex McKay
Images from digital slideshow - The Wye Tour: Claude Mirror Images from Ross-on-Wye to Chepstow 2001-2007 (click on any image to see larger version) |
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Alex McKay
Three Views on the River Wye with Chepstow and the Severn in the Distance, from the Upper Wyndcliff Glicee print. 2005 Loaned by the artist Between Tintern and Chepstow was a picturesque vantage point known as the Wyndcliff. The Duke of Beaufort built a small way-station called Moss Cottage near Lower Wyndcliff, not far from where visitors ascended (or descended) the 365 steps to a higher station called Upper Wyndcliff. In the 19th century a viewing platform known as the Eagle's Nest was constructed. Thomas Roscoe in Wanderings and Excursions in South Wales (“Vagrant Dwellers”: Tours and Excursions) described the view from the Eagle's Nest as “one of the most extensive and beautiful..that can be imagined....a vast group of views of distinct and opposite character here seem to blend and unite in one...In the valley, the eye follows for several miles the course of the Wye; which issues from a wooded glen on the left hand, curves round a green garden-like peninsula, rising into a hill studded with beautiful clumps of trees, then forces its foaming way to the right, along a huge wall of rock, nearly as high as the point where you stand, and at length, beyond Chepstow Castle, which looks like a ruined city, empties itself into the Bristol Channel, where ocean closes the dim and misty distance”. This triptych by Alex McKay juxtaposes an image of the view taken through a Claude mirror (an optical device popular with Romantic-era travelers, “An Eye Made Quiet”: The Claude Mirror & the Picturesque) with an early nineteenth century engraved illustration. Three Views on the River Wye is in part visual time-travel, asking whether a Claude mirror was used in creating the nineteenth century image. It is also a reverie about the historical interventions that shape how we respond to landscape now. |
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Alex McKay/C. S. Matheson
After Gainsborough, Man with Claude Mirror 2005 Loaned by the artists |
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Alex McKay
42" Claude Mirror installed at Tintern, Wales, UK, May 2006 Loaned from private collection |
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Alex McKay
Clutch of Claude Mirrors from 5 inches to 42 inches across Loaned from private collection |
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Alex McKay
19th Century German Claude Mirror about 5 x 7 inches Loaned from private collection |
