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Works Thomas Girtin

A Distant View of Guisborough Priory; The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

1800 - 1801

Primary Image: TG1699: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), A Distant View of Guisborough Priory, 1800–01, graphite and watercolour on laid paper, 30.4 × 46.8 cm, 12 × 18 ⅜ in. Private Collection, Norfolk (1-E-27).

Photo courtesy of Bridgeman Images

Primary Image Verso: TG1699: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury, 1800–01, graphite and watercolour on laid paper, 30.4 × 46.8 cm, 12 × 18 ⅜ in. Private Collection, Norfolk (1-E-27).

Photo courtesy of Bridgeman Images

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
Title
  • A Distant View of Guisborough Priory; The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury
Date
1800 - 1801
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
Dimensions
30.4 × 46.8 cm, 12 × 18 ⅜ in
Object Type
Studio Watercolour
Subject Terms
Monastic Ruins; Monastic Ruins; The West Country: Devon and Dorset; Yorkshire View

Collection
Versions
The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury (TG1244)
The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury (TG1245)
The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury (TG1246)
A Distant View of Guisborough Priory (TG1700)
A Distant View of Guisborough Priory (TG1701)
Catalogue Number
TG1699
Girtin & Loshak Number
452 as 'Guisborough Priory'; '1801 or 1802'
Description Source(s)
Viewed in 2001, 2002 and April 2022

Provenance

Charles James Pooley (1836–1900) (lent to London, 1875); his sale, Christie’s, 6 March 1880, lot 90; bought by Andrew Tucker Squarey (1821–1900), £36 8s (lent to Liverpool, 1886); Christie's, 5 February 1912, lot 36; bought by Leggatt Brothers, London, £5 15s 6d; bought from them by Thos. Agnew & Sons (stock no.7653), 27 February 1912; bought by Sir Hickman Bacon (1855–1945), 1 October 1912, £120; then by descent

Exhibition History

London, 1875, no.22; Liverpool, 1886, no.791; London, 1946, no.97; Arts Council, 1946, no.82; Boston, 1948, no.137; Manchester, 1975, no.93; British Council, 1982, no.30; Nottingham, 1988, pl.1; Tochigi, 1992, no.46; London, 2002, no.174

Bibliography

Mayne, 1949, p.106; Hawcroft, 1962, p.26; Smith, 2002b, p.108; described in Tax-Exempt Heritage Assets list as by 'Thomas Girtin or Follower'

About this Work

This watercolour shows the ruined east end of the priory church of Guisborough in North Yorkshire, seen from the north east with Roseberry Topping in the distance. Girtin appears to have stopped at the site on a trip to visit his patron Henry Phipps, 1st Earl of Mulgrave (1755–1831), at Mulgrave Castle, probably in the summer of 1800, when he sketched the east end from close to (TG1612). He made two major watercolours from this sketch (TG1697 and TG1698), but for this smaller work he located the impressive ruins within a broader landscape setting, which is altogether more typical of his later approach to an antiquarian subject. The attribution of the work, as with an oil painting of this composition (TG1701) and a second watercolour (TG1700), has been questioned, though unlike the others this is entirely without foundation. Thus, although the watercolour has faded somewhat, causing a flattening-out of the foliage in particular, and it seems overworked in places, with areas of crudely applied dark washes, this is not inconsistent with other works of the date that show similar evening twilight effects, where all but a distant eminence is obscured by a crepuscular gloom. Moreover, the attribution to Girtin has been confirmed by the discovery of an unfinished view of the great tithe barn at Abbotsbury in Dorset on the back of the paper, which must predate this work. This and the fact that the images are painted on one of Girtin’s favoured laid wrapping papers therefore means that this unsigned watercolour can be used with some confidence as a standard to judge the authenticity of the disputed versions of the composition.

The view of the tithe barn at Abbotsbury is an unfinished version of a composition that is based on a colour sketch that Girtin executed on his West Country tour in the autumn of 1797 (TG1244). The work was discovered during conservation treatment to remove a backing that had hitherto obscured the image. As the paper historian Peter Bower has noted, Girtin began working on this, his favoured wireside of the paper, where the surface is impressed with the lines of the mould used in its manufacture. He then abandoned the watercolour at an early stage, with just the broadest areas of colour blocked out and other spaces left blank for the later addition of livestock and farm implements. Girtin was presumably unsatisfied with his efforts, and, rather than destroying the work, as the artist is reported to have frequently done, he put the sheet aside only to return to the lightly worked paper and use the smoother side for an unrelated view of Guisborough. Girtin generally mounted his own works with a washline mount, which in this case would have hidden the image of Abbotsbury for almost two hundred years. The unfinished watercolour revealed by conservation work may be slight, but it nonetheless provides important information about the artist’s working methods, though as yet I have not been able to determine precisely what caused him to abandon the original work.

On a technical note, Bower has identified the support used by Girtin as an off-white laid wrapping paper, produced by an unknown English manufacturer (Smith, 2002b, p.225; Bower, Report). The artist employed the same paper for a number of other watercolours, including A Mill in Essex (TG1416), Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley (TG1419), Kirkstall Abbey, from Kirkstall Hill (TG1635) and Cottages at Hawes, from Gayle Beck (TG1694), all of which can be dated to 1799–1800. This suggests that my initial thought that the work was begun following Girtin’s West Country tour in 1797 and that it predates the finished version of the composition now in The Whitworth, Manchester (TG1245), is wrong. A date for both works of around 1800 would seem to be more appropriate, therefore.

(?) 1800

Guisborough Priory: The Ruined East End

TG1612

1801

Guisborough Priory: The Ruined East End

TG1697

1801

Guisborough Priory: The Ruined East End

TG1698

1801 - 1803

A Distant View of Guisborough Priory

TG1701

1800 - 1801

A Distant View of Guisborough Priory

TG1700

(?) 1797

The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1244

(?) 1799

A Mill in Essex

TG1416

1799 - 1800

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley

TG1419

1800

Kirkstall Abbey, from Kirkstall Hill

TG1635

1800 - 1801

Cottages at Hawes, from Gayle Beck

TG1694

1797 - 1798

The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1245

by Greg Smith

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