Artist given rare access to historic Welsh mansion for new exhibition

Nation.Cymru Staff

Artist Matthew Wood has been given rare access to one of Wales’ historic country houses, capturing its grand interiors and everyday details in a new exhibition.

The collection of 40 paintings of Mostyn Hall will be on display at Llandudno’s Ffin y Parc Gallery from 30 October until 21 November 2026.

Mostyn Hall, which has been home to the Mostyn family for centuries and remains in their ownership today, has a history stretching back more than 550 years.

Its great hall is believed to date from around 1470, but the house was extensively renovated in the 1630s and again in the 1840s, when architect Ambrose Poynter remodelled it in a style inspired by Tudor and Jacobean architecture.

The Grade I listed hall and Tudor gatehouse, Porth Mawr, form part of the estate which also includes historic Grade II* listed gardens, all of which have been opened to the public on selected days since 2014.

Lord Mostyn gave Matthew free rein, and he stalks the house from attic to scullery, showing us tall cupboards standing sentine, stone steps with their time-worn treads and neat, sun-bleached rugs.

Depicting the house both as a place full of history, and as a home, albeit an unusually large one, the works let the subject speak, catching the modern, quotidian life of the house threaded through its carefully preserved tradition.

With the perception and telling observation that have become characteristic in his work, Matthew depicts both the public and private functions of Mostyn Hall through a discarded mug on the desk, half-empty boxes, and a cushion to keep a door open.

Light plays an important role in Wood’s paintings, falling across polished floors, panelling and furniture, while his attention to detail brings out the different textures of wood, stone, glass and fabric.

Matthew, who lives in mid Wales with his family, has been exhibiting with Ffin y Parc since 2013. For more information on the Mostyn Hall exhibition, visit the gallery’s site here.