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Chirk Aqueduct This vertical landscape focuses on three golden, tall, and narrow arches. The arches, highlighted by the sun—as indicated by diagonal shadow patterns—are reflected in the water below. The span, continuing off both sides of the composition, has two horizontal bands of darker color at the top. The arches’ golden colors are silhouetted from the surrounding background and sky. Colors of the trees and shrubbery are in varying warm tones, darker greens used for emphasis and contrast. A split rail fences diagonally sweeps down behind the arches. There does not appear to be any signs of human activity. Background As there is no sign of human activity, this topographical painting emphasizes the height and structure of the Chirk Aqueduct. Cotman’s use of light and contrasts emphasizes the rhythm and shapes of the narrow arches. Chirk Aqueduct, designed by Thomas Telford and completed in 1801, contains ten massive stone arches 70 feet above the Vale (valley) of Ceiriog. The aqueduct was a continuation of the Shropshire Union Canal, connecting _____ with _______. This was a necessary link in the transportation of goods (?)...to and from Wales. The aqueduct’s interior channel, originally made of puddled clay, was of cast iron, enabling packetboats to carry increasingly greater weight. Aqueducts became a necessity of to carry and continue a canal’s track across roads, rivers and valleys. The earliest English aqueduct was built in 1761. The Barton Aqueduct, made of stone and rising 38 feet above the ground, carried the Bridgewater Canal over the River Irwell. Cotman’s painting of Chirk Aqueduct emphasizes the technological wonder of this massive structure. At the turn of the 19th Century inland navigation was an absolute necessity for the transportation of goods. The Shropshire Union Canal, _______, finish sentence. If the population of a district through which a railway is carried afford any adequate notion of the extent of traffic that may be expected upon its entire opening, then may the propriety of the Manchester and Leeds railway look forward almost with certainty, to an ample return for their outlay, notwithstanding the enormously increased expenditure above the original estimate…the manufactures of cotton, woolen, worsted, silk, and linen, are carried on to an amazing extent in the district traversed by this railway. Cotton, which is chiefly imported to Liverpool in its raw state, is sent from thence to the different factories to undergo the necessary course of preparation, from whence it is conveyed to Manchester either for home sale or for exportation. A great proportion of the cotton manufactured in Great Britain, and intended for continental markets, is sent from Manchester to the ports of Hull and Goole; and the woolens and worsted manufactured in the West Riding of Yorkshire are, to a great extent, transmitted to Liverpool to be exported to the east and West Indies, to Canada and the United States, and to other parts of the globe.
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