For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.
Works Thomas Girtin and Joseph Mallord William Turner after John Robert Cozens

A Bridge near Castel del Bosco, on the Road between Pisa and Florence

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0692: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), after John Robert Cozens (1752–97), A Bridge near Castel del Bosco, on the Road between Pisa and Florence, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, 18.4 × 26.3 cm, 7 ¼ × 10 ⅜ in. Tate, Turner Bequest CCCLXXVI, 8 (D36567).

Photo courtesy of Tate (All Rights Reserved)

Artist's source: (?) John Robert Cozens (1752–97), after (?) Alexander Cozens (1717–86), Between Castel del Bosco and La Scala, graphite on laid paper, 17.1 × 25.4 cm, 6 ¾ × 10 in. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1977.14.4490).

Photo courtesy of Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (Public Domain)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) after John Robert Cozens (1752-1797)
Title
  • A Bridge near Castel del Bosco, on the Road between Pisa and Florence
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
Dimensions
18.4 × 26.3 cm, 7 ¼ × 10 ⅜ in
Inscription

‘Between Castel del Bosco and La Scala’ on the back, by Thomas Girtin (now illegible, but readable from the source)

Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy
Subject Terms
Hills and Mountains; Italian View: Tuscany

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0692
Description Source(s)
Viewed in January 2018

Provenance

Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833); his posthumous sale, Christie's, 26–28 June and 1–2 July 1833 (day and lot number not known); bought by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851); accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856

Bibliography

Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1237 as 'Bridge, with distant town on hillside' by Thomas Girtin; Bell and Girtin, 1935, p.38; Turner Online as 'Italian Scene: A Bridge among Hills, with a Distant Town' by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin, 'c.1796' (Accessed 08/09/2022)

About this Work

This watercolour, showing the view from the Pisa to Florence road, near the village of Castel del Bosco, was copied from a drawing that may be by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) (see the source image above). It was produced at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), where Girtin and his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) were employed across three winters, probably between 1794 and 1797, to make ‘finished drawings’ from the ‘Copies’ of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings of Cozens’. The majority of the resulting watercolours saw the two artists engaged in a unique collaboration; as they later recalled, Girtin ‘drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’ and, as the diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) reported, Turner received ‘3s. 6d each night’, though ‘Girtin did not say what He had’ (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).1

Monro’s posthumous sale, in 1833, contained only twenty or so sketches by Cozens, so the patron must have borrowed the majority of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings’ copied by Girtin and Turner. In this case, the source of the watercolour, a simple tracing inscribed ‘Between Castel del Bosco & La Scala’, was almost certainly purchased at the sale of ‘Mr COZENS’ in July 1794 by Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827).2 As Kim Sloan has noted, Beaumont mounted ‘215 “tracings” or drawings on oiled paper’ in an album that he presumably lent to Monro, and it was from this collection, now at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, that the two young artists produced more than fifty watercolours (Sloan and Joyner, 1993, pp.89–91). The natural assumption is that the source drawing was executed on the return leg of Cozens’ first trip to Italy in the spring of 1779. However, as Sloan has pointed out, the inscription on the source for two related drawings (see source images TG0673 and TG0792), ‘from Pisa to Florence’, would suggest a journey in the opposite direction. It is likely that the original sketch was actually made by Alexander Cozens (1717–86) on his Italian visit around 1746, though, as with other views in the vicinity, what we now have is a tracing of it made by his son John at a later date (Sloan, 1986, pp.127–28).

The view seems to have been taken from close to the river Arno, which appears in one of the other Monro School view of Castel del Bosco (TG0792). The watercolour clearly demonstrates the dangers of working from such a slight outline, possibly at two removes from nature. Thus, the bridge, for instance, has no structural logic, neither inhabiting a credible space nor connecting two given points, though this has been slightly corrected in the finished drawing. Additionally, the church to the left seems as though it is about to be launched out over the hill it occupies.

Monro’s posthumous sale, in 1833, contained numerous Italian scenes attributed to Turner, many of which were acquired by the artist himself, as here. The cataloguer of the Turner Bequest, Alexander Finberg, thought that Girtin alone was responsible for watercolours such as this, whilst more recently Andrew Wilton has established the joint authorship of the majority of the Monro School works bought by Turner (Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1237; Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). This example has been heavily worked by Turner, using a full palette of colours, so that Girtin’s underlying drawing is barely visible, particularly in comparison with the slight monochrome washes used on most of the examples in the Turner Bequest. The pencil work, in any case, is likely to have constituted little more than a simple tracing of the Cozens outline, but there is some evidence that Girtin subsequently went over Turner’s watercolour and reinforced the outlines with a soft piece of graphite or black chalk in a manner that is entirely characteristic of his style at this date.

1794 - 1797

The Arno, Seen from the Pisa to Florence Road

TG0673

1794 - 1797

A Convent Overlooking the Arno, near Castel del Bosco

TG0792

1794 - 1797

A Convent Overlooking the Arno, near Castel del Bosco

TG0792

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

Footnotes

  1. 1 The full diary entry, giving crucial details of the artists’ work at Monro’s house, is transcribed in the Documents section of the Archive (1798 – Item 2).
  2. 2 A full record of the sale is available in the Documents section of the Archive (1794 – Item 1)

Revisions & Feedback

The website will be updated from time to time and, when changes are made, a PDF of the previous version of each page will be archived here for consultation and citation.

Please help us to improve this catalogue


If you have information, a correction or any other suggestions to improve this catalogue, please contact us.