- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- A Folding Bed
- Date
- 1799 - 1800
- Medium and Support
- Graphite on wove paper
- Dimensions
- 15 × 10.3 cm, 5 ⅞ × 4 in
- Object Type
- Outline Drawing
- Subject Terms
- Miscellaneous Studies
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1516
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 208 as 'A Folding Bed ... in which Girtin slept when in Devonshire, turned up on its hinges'; '1797'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001 and 2018
Provenance
Chambers Hall (1786–1855); presented to the Museum, 1855
Bibliography
Binyon, 1898–1907, no.61a
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 East
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
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
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
St James’s Park, with Westminster Abbey in the Distance
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
Hawes Fine Art
London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London
London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London
Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
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, University of Manchester
A House Seen across a Lake, 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
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
The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
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
Old London Bridge, with the Shot Tower in Construction, and St Olave's Church
Private Collection
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About this Work
This sketch of a folding bed upturned on its hinges was said by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak to be the ‘bed in which Girtin slept when in Devonshire’ in 1797, though the authors of the catalogue of the artist’s works did not record the evidence on which they based their claim (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.162). It is possible that they had access to an otherwise unrecorded inscription, but I suspect that this was a case of making a decision about the date of a drawing from stylistic evidence and then fitting this into the pattern of the artist’s known travels. From our perspective, the sketch appears to be a clear case of Girtin encountering something on the road that was so unusual that it demanded to be recorded, including the detail of the chamber pot underneath. In fact, as a cursory survey of the history of eighteenth-century furniture reveals, a folding bed was far from a rarity at the time, and not just amongst the military classes, with their ingenious camp beds. In what Amanda Vickery has described as a ‘space-strapped market even amongst the rich’, folding beds could be hidden in wardrobes, presses and commodes (Vickery, 2009, p.296). The example sketched by Girtin, which appears to have opened out with a short tester above, is amongst the more utilitarian examples, and, given that it does not appear to have had the capacity to be hidden away, it may indeed have been sketched at an inn, as Girtin and Loshak assumed.
The drawing is notable for the particularly soft graphite used by Girtin and the evident speed with which he worked, and this is confirmed by the appearance of a fingerprint at the lower left. A disturbance in the edge of the paper at the top also hints that the drawing may have been extracted from a sketchbook. The measurements do not quite tally with the slightly bigger drawings that appear to have come from a book used in Yorkshire around 1799–1800, however (TG1509 and TG1510).
1799 - 1800
Grimbald Bridge, near Knaresborough
TG1509
1799 - 1800
A Crag on the River Nidd
TG1510