- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- A Cottage amongst Trees
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and scratching out on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 24.8 × 33.5 cm, 9 ¾ × 13 ¼ in
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Picturesque Vernacular
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1430
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001
Provenance
Horace Bernard Milling (1898–1953); then by descent to his widow Mercie Winifred Milling (née Sanderson) later Mercie Spooner (1902–90); presented to the Gallery, together with the Spooner bequest, 1967
Exhibition History
London, 1968b, no.48; Bath, 1969, no.34; Bristol, 1973, no.29; London, 1974b, no.30; London, 1977, no.20; London, 2005, no.52
Other entries in London and the Home Counties, Together with Miscellaneous Studies and Views

Windsor Castle, from the River Thames
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum

Great Bookham Church, from the East
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust)

The Gateway, St Albans Abbey
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
Private Collection

An Interior View of St Albans Abbey, from the Crossing
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

The Interior of St Albans Abbey
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery

Windsor Castle and the Great Park, from the South West
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Great Park: Herne’s Oak with a Herd of Deer
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Stags Fighting amongst a Herd of Deer in Windsor Great Park, with the Castle in the Distance
Private Collection

A Herd of Deer in Richmond Park
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section One: Somerset House to Blackfriars Bridge
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Two: The Surrey Bank
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Three: Westminster Bridge to York Stairs
Private Collection

Westminster, from the West Corner of the Adelphi Terrace
Private Collection

The Thames with St Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Shipping on the Thames, Looking down Limehouse Reach towards Greenwich, with the Church of St Alfege in the Distance
Private Collection

A Haystack on a Farm, on the Road to Harrow-on-the-Hill
Private Collection

A Panoramic Landscape, near Norwood
Private Collection

Westminster Abbey, Seen from Green Park and the Queen's Basin
National Gallery of Art, Washington

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Paul's Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Untraced Works

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A River Scene, with Boats
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

An Imaginary Coast Scene with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea
Private Collection

London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

Turver’s Farm, Radwinter
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Farm with an Unidentified Windmill
Private Collection

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Private Collection, Norfolk

Trees and Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone-next-Dartford
British Museum, London

A Farmhouse in a Woodland Setting, Said to Be in Devon
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Farm Buildings, Probably in Surrey
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester

Tintern Village, Seen across the Forge Pond, Formerly Known as ‘The Mill-Pond’
Private Collection

A Picturesque House Overlooking a River, with Distant Windmills
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington

The West End of an Unidentified Church
Private Collection

Effingham Churchyard, Formerly Known as 'A Country Churchyard'
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

An Unidentified Windmill, Probably in Lambeth
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston

Unidentified Buildings, Herne Hill
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

Study of a Sailor on Board a Ship; A Fishing Boat
Private Collection

The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper's The Task
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

An Unidentified Subject, Probably from James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian
Tate, London

The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Study of a Woman Reading; A Slight Study of a Seated Woman
Private Collection

Portrait Study of a Man, Said to Be the Artist George Barret the Younger
Private Collection

A Study of a Lion from the Tower of London
Private Collection

An Open Field with a Cart and Horses, Known as ‘The Carter’
British Museum, London

A Church Seen across Fields, with Another Sketch Depicting a Woman
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

A Landscape with Figures by Railings
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Self-Portrait of the Artist at Work
British Museum, London

An Unidentified Landscape, with a Church amongst Trees
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Cottage and a Windmill Surrounded by Trees
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from the Thames
Private Collection

The Head of a Youth, Here Identified as Joseph Mallord William Turner
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Old London Bridge, with the Shot Tower in Construction, and St Olave's Church
Private Collection
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About this Work
This image of a picturesque domestic building next to a pond is one of a series of views of vernacular structures embowered within a woodland setting that Girtin executed around 1798–99. Some of these were commissioned by Girtin’s father-in-law, Phineas Borrett (1756–1843), and they show the Essex farm buildings that the prosperous London goldsmith had bought as an investment (for example, see TG1413 and TG1414). What initially appear to be picturesque compositions produced from the imagination, similar to the rural scenes of Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88), were in fact studied from life, and it may be that the majority of Girtin’s cottage scenes, including this example, depict actual examples of the nation’s vernacular architecture. Indeed, from the titles that Girtin appended to the rural views he showed at the Royal Academy’s exhibitions, it seems that he was keen to emphasise that they were not simply picturesque compositions following the popular conventions of the day. Thus, the mill scene he showed in 1798 was stated to be ‘in Devonshire’ (TG1427), and a ‘Cottage’ in the same exhibition was taken ‘from nature’ (Royal Academy, London, 1798, nos.677 and 575). In all of this, Girtin was following the example of Thomas Hearne (1744–1817) and his watercolours such A Cottage, near Witham, Essex (see figure 1). Hearne’s sketches of vernacular buildings in the southern counties featured prominently in the collection of the artists’ mutual patron Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), and Girtin copied some of them at Monro’s home at the Adelphi (Christie’s, 1 July 1833, lots 109 and 113). I am not sure that Girtin displays the same ‘reverence for vernacular buildings as symbolic of a simple, honest and laborious rural life’ that David Morris has discerned in Hearne’s work, but examples such as this view of a substantial cottage or farmhouse follow the same formula, with a similar close attention paid to the local materials used in the building’s construction (Morris, 1989, p.128). We may not know precisely where the building was sketched, but I suspect that an architectural historian with a specialist knowledge of eighteenth-century vernacular buildings might be able to work out its location and that it might just turn out to be in Essex too.
The watercolour has faded noticeably, with the blue of the sky, the grey of the clouds and the green of the vegetation having either disappeared or changed to a range of brown and earth colours. No doubt the work has been exhibited in strong light and this has facilitated the fading process, but fundamentally it was Girtin’s choice of fugitive pigments used in multiple thin washes that caused the problem. Just two unstable pigments, probably blue indigo and yellow gamboge, would have been enough to account for much of the deterioration seen here. The artist did use another blue pigment, perhaps ultramarine, for the reflections in the pond as well as on the figures and for a few highlights in the foliage, and this gives some clue as to the work’s original appearance. Unusually for this sort of scene, the artist did not use any bodycolour for the highlights, and this might suggest a slightly later date than the 1798 generally given for the series as a whole.
(?) 1799
Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
TG1413
(?) 1799
Turver’s Farm, Wimbish
TG1414
1798 - 1799
An Overshot Mill
TG1427