- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- A Mill in Essex
- Date
- (?) 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and bodycolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 43.2 × 60.3 cm, 17 × 23 ¾ in
- Subject Terms
- Essex View; Picturesque Vernacular; Wind and Water Mills
-
- Collection
-
- Private Collection, Norfolk
- (I-E-15)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1416
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 272 as '1798'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001, 2002 and April 2022
Provenance
Phineas Borrett (1756–1843); possibly then by descent to Mary Ann Girtin (née Borrett) (1781–1843) and Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74); then by descent to George Wyndham Hog Girtin (1835–1911) (lent to London, 1871; London, 1875); by a settlement to his sister, Ida Johanna Hog Rogge, née Girtin (1834–1925), January 1880; sold by her to J. Palser & Sons (stock no.15466); bought by Sir Hickman Bacon (1855–1945), 1 April 1901; then by descent
Exhibition History
(?) Royal Academy, 1799, no.341 as ’A mill in Essex’; London, 1871, no.244 as ’Landscape, Stansted Mill, Essex’; London, 1875, no.100 as ’Mill at Stanstead, Essex’; London, 1927, no catalogue; Agnew’s, 1931, no.101; London, 1946, no.98; Arts Council, 1946, no.83; Arts Council, 1948c, no.83; Thornbury, 1862, vol.1, p.126; Boston, 1948, no.136; London, 1951, no.507; Bedford, 1952, no.42; Agnew’s, 1953a, no.54 as ’A Mill in Essex’; Norwich, 1955, no.34; Manchester, 1975, no.43, Hove, 1993, no.20; Dulwich, 2001, no.9; London, 2002, no.143
Bibliography
Thornbury, 1862, vol.1, p.126; Davies, 1924, p.2, pl.31; Mayne, 1949, p.48, p.106; Williams, 1952, p.106; Hawcroft, 1962, p.26; Farries, 1981–88, vol.3, p.105, vol.5, pp.33–34; described in the Tax-Exempt Heritage Assets list as 'A mill in Essex, called The Old Mill at Stanstead, Essex' (Accessed 16/09/2022)
Place depicted
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
The title of this watercolour stems from a long-standing tradition that it was the work Girtin exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799 as ‘A mill in Essex’, in which case it was a bold decision by the artist to submit such an uncompromising view (Exhibitions: Royal Academy, London, 1799, no.341). Even in its unfaded original condition, the vertical drying fold in the paper would have been a prominent and disturbing feature, and the composition itself is highly unconventional. The way that two of the sails are arbitrarily cut by the edge of the paper, the awkward relationship between the mill and the farm buildings, and the flat and featureless landscape setting all flout the picturesque conventions that are a feature of many of Girtin’s rural views of this date, including other Essex views such as Turver’s Farm, Radwinter (TG1414). As a number of writers have argued, some of this reflects the impact made by the arrival in London in 1793 of a landscape by the great Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–69), The Mill (see TG1451 figure 1), though it may have been through the engraving that Girtin knew the work (see TG1451 figure 2), and the same writers have argued that it was this work that provided the basis for his reworking of the composition (TG1451) (Wilcox, 1993, p.58). The low tone of the colouring; the empty, featureless landscape (the two figures to the left having been scratched out); and the mill itself, standing powerfully as a mysterious symbol of defiance, indeed have parallels in the celebrated landscape of Rembrandt. However, Girtin’s combination of a picturesque subject, a sublime and monumental treatment of his material, and an utter disregard for the conventions of landscape composition make this one of his most radical works and something that cannot simply be explained in terms of historical precedent.
Not least amongst the work’s idiosyncratic elements is the fact that Girtin’s watercolour depicts a humble Essex mill and set of barns on a monumental scale typically reserved for images of the nation’s pre-eminent antiquities. The structure depicted here, known as a post-mill because the body of the mill revolves around a central post to catch the wind, has been identified by Kenneth Farries at Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex, but, as Tim Wilcox has pointed out, it is more likely to be one of the two mills at nearby Radwinter (Farries, 1981–88, vol.5, pp.33–34; Wilcox, 1993, p.58). Indeed, the form of the barns is similar to what is seen in a series of picturesque cottage and farm scenes at Radwinter and Wimbish that Girtin painted for his future father-in-law, Phineas Borrett (1756–1843), also around 1799 (such as TG1413 and TG1452). Borrett, a prosperous London goldsmith, invested in property in Essex and it seems that A Mill in Essex was part of a significant commission that saw Girtin recording what appear to be generic rural scenes but what are actually the working farms bought by his father-in-law. Not surprisingly, given its personal associations, the watercolour remained in the Girtin family collection for at least three generations, and it is likely that, as with Pinkney’s Farm, Wimbish (TG1413), it was inherited by the artist’s son either via Girtin’s widow, Mary Ann Girtin (1781–1843), or more probably from Borrett himself, as the property also came to Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74). A small, later view, A Windmill behind a Barn (TG1795), is one of a series that again features buildings from Borrett’s Essex estates, possibly including the same mill, though it appears to be more of an imaginative exercise in picturesque composition.
On a technical note, the paper historian Peter Bower has identified the support used by Girtin as an off-white laid wrapping paper by an unknown English maker. It came from the same source as the paper used for Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley (TG1419), Kirkstall Abbey (TG1635), Cottages at Hawes (TG1694) and A Distant View of Guisborough Priory (TG1699) (Smith, 2002b, p.182; Bower, Report). The watercolour is extremely faded, with the blue of the sky, the grey of the clouds and the green of the vegetation having disappeared or degraded completely. 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 drastic deterioration seen here, though the artist did use another blue pigment, perhaps ultramarine, for the reflection in the pond, and this gives some clue as to the work’s original appearance. A similar farm scene (TG1757), which again probably depicts an Essex property owned by Borrett, has survived in a much better state and thus helps us to understand the changes this watercolour has undergone, though it must be admitted that much of the original power and provoking originality of A Mill in Essex have remained, despite, and perhaps even partly because of, its almost monochromatic state.
A watercolour known as Farm Buildings, near Cambridge (see figure 1) is inscribed ‘T Girtin 1801’ on the back. The work, which is not by Girtin, repeats two of the farm buildings and the pond in the foreground seen here, whilst omitting the mill itself and extending the landscape to the left. The trees, in particular, are very weak in their execution, and I suspect that this variation on A Mill in Essex is the work of the same unknown amateur artist who was responsible for a comparable adaption of a Girtin composition showing Rhuddlan Castle in North Wales (see TG1304 figure 1).
(?) 1799
Turver’s Farm, Wimbish
TG1414
1795 - 1800
A Windmill by a River
TG1451
(?) 1799
Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
TG1413
(?) 1799
Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
TG1452
(?) 1799
Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
TG1413
(?) 1802
A Windmill behind a Barn
TG1795
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
1800 - 1801
A Distant View of Guisborough Priory; The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury
TG1699
1800 - 1801
A Farmyard with Cattle, Poultry and Labourers Unloading Hay, Possibly Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
TG1757
1798 - 1799
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
TG1304