- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- A Cave Cottage, Bridgnorth
- Date
- (?) 1798
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and pen and ink on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 11 × 17.6 cm, 4 ⅜ × 6 ⅞ in
- Inscription
‘Cottage at Bridgnorth N. Wales / no 302 - Value 3/-’ on the back
- Object Type
- Colour Sketch: Studio Work
- Subject Terms
- Picturesque Vernacular; Shropshire View
-
- Collection
-
- Horne Museum, Florence
- (6024)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1356
- Description Source(s)
- Exhibition Catalogue
Provenance
Possibly Sotheby's, 26 June 1905, part of lot 29; Herbert Horne (1864–1916); bequeathed to the City of Florence, 1916
Exhibition History
Florence, 1966, no.46 as ’Cottage a Bridgewalt, nel Galles del Nord’; Florence, 2009, no.17
Bibliography
Collobi, 1963, no.198; Feather, 2014, pp.232–33
Place depicted
Other entries in The 1798 Welsh Tour:
Sketches and Subsequent Watercolours
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Tate, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Private Collection, North Wales
Caernarfon: A Street Scene with Plas Mawr
Tate, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
British Museum, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
British Museum, London
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
A Bridge over the Glaslyn, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
Private Collection
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake), Looking towards Cadair Idris
Private Collection
A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
British Museum, London
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
British Museum, London
An Unidentified Landscape, Possibly the Vale of Clwyd
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Valle Crucis Abbey: From the Cloister Looking Towards the Dormitory
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey: The Chapter House, from the South West
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A River Scene, Probably the Dee near Corwen
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
The Cloisters of Chester Cathedral
Private Collection
The Red Castle, from Hawk Lake, with a Distant View of Shrewsbury
Private Collection
Wroxeter: The Roman Wall
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
The Old Severn Bridge at Bridgnorth
British Museum, London
Hereford Cathedral, from across the River Wye
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
An Unidentified Valley, Probably in North Wales
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Cadair Idris, from the Estuary near Barmouth
Private Collection
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.
About this Work
The title under which this small sketch has hitherto appeared comes from an inscription on the back of the drawing, but we can be more specific about the ‘Cottage at Bridgnorth’ depicted here, since Girtin’s view shows one of the dwellings that were built into the town’s caves. Many of these occurred naturally, but others were carved into the soft sandstone that forms the town’s foundations, and there is some evidence to suggest that the curious residence, with its free-standing chimney seen here, was located in what was once a hermitage dating from the Saxon period. The solitary dwelling places for those who chose to live outside the traditional monastic communities fell out of favour after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the caves in Bridgnorth were occupied by a succession of poor and otherwise homeless people well into the twentieth century. A photograph of one of these, dating from 1896, may show the same structure depicted by Girtin (see figure 1). What we are looking at, therefore, is a humbler version of the famous hermitage at Warkworth, which Girtin made the subject of two large watercolours (TG1096 and TG1097), though the mood of solitary contemplation seen in those works has been dissipated in this work by the picturesque act of appropriation.
The artist probably visited Bridgnorth in the summer of 1798, either on his way to or returning from his trip to North Wales. This was presumably the occasion on which Girtin also executed the large-scale and highly detailed pencil sketch of the old Severn Bridge at Bridgnorth (TG1357), though the fact that that drawing was used as the basis for a dated watercolour from 1802 (TG1755) has suggested to some that the artist revisited the town at a later date (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.169). I suspect that it was the former that was the case and that, as with the comparable view Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd (TG1337), this work was actually sketched on the spot in 1798. The status of this Bridgnorth scene as a sketch from nature is not entirely clear-cut, however. Though there are plenty of signs of a work executed at speed, particularly in the vegetation behind the cave, and the red colour of the stone is barely indicated, other areas have been worked over in multiple layers of wash, which would have required time for each to dry before painting recommenced. The figure in the foreground may be the telling detail, however, as she lacks any sort of forethought and planning, and, on balance, I suspect that this work was not made in the studio as a saleable equivalent to the on-the-spot colour sketches, as was the artist’s practice from 1796 onwards.
1798
Warkworth Hermitage
TG1096
1798 - 1799
Warkworth Hermitage
TG1097
(?) 1798
The Old Severn Bridge at Bridgnorth
TG1357
1802
Bridgnorth
TG1755
(?) 1798
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
TG1337