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Experience the Best of Wales!

The National Eisteddfod begins today in St. David's, on the southwest coast of Wales.

This weeklong celebration of Welsh culture honors music, drama, literature, arts and crafts. It is said to date back to the year 1176, when Lord Rhys invited poets and musicians from all over the country to the his castle in Cardigan. He allowed the best poet and musician to sit with him at his table, a tradition that is still carried on today.

Today we salute Wales with a watercolor by George Elbert Burr. The cliffs and harbors of the Welsh coast are skillfully rendered with saturated colors and hazy atmospheric perspective to dramatize the grandeur of the scene.

Burr worked as an illustrator for several New York magazines: Harper's, Cosmopolitan, and Frank Leslie's Weekly Newspaper. His work for Leslie's allowed him to travel coast to coast in America, indulging his passion for landscapes. Burr set out on a European journey in 1896, and traveled for almost five years. Bay at Nevin, Wales was painted during this time. After his travels, Burr moved to Colorado and later Arizona, and made prints depicting the monumental deserts and mountains of the American Southwest.

Pictured: George Elbert Burr, 1859–1939, Bay at Nevin, Wales, 1899, watercolor on paper, 5 1/2 x 8 13/16 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Carolann Smurthwaite in memory of her mother, Caroline Atherton Cornell Smurthwaite.