Ponies Pentre Pella
If we were to imagine a game called ‘Kyffin Bingo’, then surely this painting would be a winner.
This view of Pentre Pella presents a charming and uncontrived collection of some of the artist’s best-loved themes. It is a large picture of a small Welsh settlement, with the bonus of a chapel. It also features drystone walls and yet another Kyffin favourite, Welsh mountain ponies. It scores stylistically too, with its striking wintery palette of thick, glossy slabs of oil paint.
Pentre Pella (literally, ‘furthest village’) is not quite as remote as it sounds or looks in this painting, being situated on the outskirts of Anglesey’s largest town, Holyhead, at the foot of its highest point, Mynydd Tŵr. From this vantage, you can see the town below, with its breakwater and its port and ferries arriving and departing for Dublin. You could never guess this from Kyffin’s depiction, as it is this small gathering of buildings on a chilly day that he has chosen to focus upon.
What may have been more aesthetically appealing to him than the convenience, or otherwise, of a busy port, would be Pentre Pella’s proximity to the wilder aspects of Holy Island. Over the other side of the mountain lies South Stack with its rich diversity of bird and marine life and - even better, in terms of inspiration - its treacherous rocks and ferocious seas: other themes that were close to Kyffin’s heart and which would also score highly in a game of Kyffin Bingo.
But rather than battling the elements, here Kyffin takes a pause. When he painted it, the scene would already have been a nostalgic one, raising possible questions regarding the evolution and survival of a community, whose primary need, in the absence of any other public building, would appear to have been spiritual. By now, the chapel, built at the height of the Nonconformist revival in 1904, is shut, and perhaps the inhabitants of Pentre Pella congregate and socialise along the aisles and in the cafes of Holyhead’s supermarkets instead.
This lovely, tranquil scene of ponies grazing in the shadow of grey buildings and within grey walls shows a small place on the cusp of wilderness, and despite the absence of people, it also hints movingly at the presence of generations of a tenacious community, adapting to the ever-challenging vicissitudes of time.
