Many supporting studies can be found in a sketch book now held by Tate Britain (Record: TB XLVI).

The imprisonment of Owain, dressed in red in the painting, left his brother Llywelyn free to concentrate on uniting Wales against the English.

In 1798 he paid a much longer visit to Wales, travelling through Dyffryn Wysg, Ceredigion, Aberystwyth, Gwynedd and Llangollen.

The verse reads, "How awful is the silence of the waste,/ Where nature lifts her mountains to the sky,/ Majestic solitude, behold the tower/ Where hopeless OWEN, long imprison'd, pined/ And wrung his hands for liberty in vain.

"[1] Turner's use of contrast between light and dark creates a sense of peril and categorizes the painting as an example of the Sublime.