Sir Henry Hickman Bacon, 11th Baronet of Redgrave and 12th Baronet of Mildenhall (1855–1945), assembled a celebrated collection of watercolours at Thonock Hall in Lincolnshire. Covering all of the major artists of the ‘Golden Age of Watercolours’, the collection, now housed at Raveningham Hall in Norfolk, is particularly notable for a fine group of late watercolour sketches by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) as well as more than twenty works by or attributed to Girtin (Shanes, 2001). Bacon’s descendants have been generous lenders to exhibitions, meaning that watercolours such as A Mill in Essex (TG1416), A View on the River Wharfe (TG1674) and La Rue Saint-Denis, Paris (TG1891) are amongst the best known of Girtin’s works remaining in private hands.

(?) 1799

A Mill in Essex

TG1416

1800 - 1801

A View on the River Wharfe

TG1674

1802

La Rue Saint-Denis, Paris: A Scene for Thomas Dibdin’s Pantomime ‘Harlequin’s Habeas’

TG1891