- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- A Farmhouse
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 28.3 × 41 cm, 11 ⅛ × 16 ⅛ in
- Object Type
- On-the-spot Colour Sketch
- Subject Terms
- Picturesque Vernacular
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1439
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 407 as 'Unfinished'; '1800'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001, 2002 and 2018
Provenance
Chambers Hall (1786–1855); presented to the Museum, 1855
Exhibition History
London, 2002, no.141
Bibliography
Binyon, 1898–1907, no.14; Lemaître, 1955, p.184
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 study of a farmhouse is very likely to have been coloured on the spot and is not, as Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak suggested, an unfinished studio watercolour (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.190). This can be demonstrated by comparing it with an example of an unfinished studio watercolour, St Ann’s Gate, Salisbury (TG1756), which illustrates Girtin’s normal practice of working across the whole of a composition in a single tone and then moving on to the next colour. In contrast, Girtin here coloured just enough of each of the different elements of the building to record the general appearance of the tiles, the brickwork and half-timbered walls, and the vegetation, something that would just not have made sense if the artist had been producing a studio watercolour. Additionally, there are a number of other features suggesting that the study was worked at speed from nature, ranging from the limited number of tints, which are used over a very utilitarian set of pencil outlines, to the way that the artist has lost control of the application of his washes of colour in a number of areas. The blotting, in particular, suggests the difficulties that Girtin had in working in the field when he added extra water to soften the tone of details such as the roof tiles to the left and the vegetation behind the building. Painting at speed in the field was still about capturing an effect, in this case of bright sunlight, but equally the artist needed to record the colours and textures of the materials used in the construction of the time-worn vernacular building.
The building itself cannot be identified, despite Girtin’s careful record, but structurally it bears a resemblance to two others that the artist depicted for his father-in-law and patron, Phineas Borrett (1756–1843), around 1798–99 of a property he owned known as Pinkney’s Farm (TG1413 and TG1452). The particular combination of red brick, half-timbered walls and brown earthen tiles is characteristic of the Essex properties that the London-based Borrett had bought as an investment. I suspect that this sketch, therefore, was made on the trip to Essex that Girtin must have undertaken to gather material for Borrett’s commission, and that the artist’s evident concern with the materials and textures of a rural farmhouse reflect a need to get such details correct for his patron. It is even possible that the work depicts Pinkney’s Farm itself, though it was not used as the basis for a finished work and shows a different view from the two watercolours that Girtin executed of that property.
On a technical note, the paper historian Peter Bower has described the support used by Girtin as a rope-brown laid wrapping paper, made by an unknown English manufacturer, worked on the artist’s favoured wireside, where the surface is impressed with the lines of the mould used in its manufacture. The paper was made from a blend of white low-grade linen, old hemp rope and coloured rags, and the sheet originally had a much coarser texture, but this was flattened out when it was mounted (Smith, 2002b, p.141; Bower, Report).
A close, albeit smaller copy of Girtin’s colour sketch appeared on the art market as ‘attributed to’ Henry Edridge (1768–1821) (Sotheby’s, 7 July 2011, lot 279ii), having previously been attributed to Girtin. I had thought that this might have been a case of Girtin making a replica of his own drawing, and that he had perhaps sold the work to a collector keen to acquire an example of his sketching style. However, no longer dependent on an old black and white photograph, I could see that the colour washes are crude and the pencil drawing hard and very different from Girtin’s work. The signature to the right must therefore be a forgery, added to a copy by an unknown, probably amateur artist.
(?) 1802
St Ann’s Gate, Salisbury
TG1756
(?) 1799
Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
TG1413
(?) 1799
Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
TG1452