- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- (?) Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) after (?) Edward Dayes (1763-1804)
- Title
-
- An Interior View of St Albans Abbey, from the Crossing
- Date
- 1791 - 1792
- Medium and Support
- Watercolour on wove paper
- Dimensions
- 56.5 × 47.6 cm, 22 ¼ × 18 ¾ in
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Gothic Architecture: Cathedral View; Hertfordshire
-
- Collection
- Versions
-
The Interior of St Albans Abbey
(TG1040)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1039
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 136i as 'St. Alban's Cathedral'; '1795–6'
- Description Source(s)
- Gallery Website
Provenance
Sir William Tite (1798–1873) (lent to London, 1871; London, 1873); his posthumous sale, Christie’s, 4 July 1874, lot 2; bought by 'Noseda'; Edward Cohen (1817–86), £117 12s (lent to London, 1875; London, 1877); then by bequest to his niece, Annie Sophia Poulter (c.1846–1924); then by descent to Edward Alexander Poulter (1883–1973); Thos. Agnew & Sons, 1931 (stock no.1225); James Leslie Wright (1862–1954) (lent to Birmingham, 1939); the Fine Art Society, London; bought from them by the Gallery, 1960
Exhibition History
London, 1871, no.113 as ’Interior of St. Albans’ Abbey Church’; London, 1873, no.381; London, 1875, no.104 as 'Interior of St. Albans' Abbey'; London, 1877, no.299 as ’Interior of Winchester Cathedral’; Agnew’s, 1931, no.110; Agnew's, 1933, no.74 as 'Interior of Winchester Cathedral'; Birmingham, 1939, no.194a; London, 1949, no.182; Fine Art Society, 1951, no.30; Fine Art Society, 1954, no.30
Bibliography
Country Life, vol.79, no.2048 (18 April 1936), p.xliv; Gallery Website as by a 'follower of Thomas Girtin' (Accessed 26/09/2022)
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
Revisions & Feedback
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About this Work
This view of the choir of St Albans Abbey, taken from the crossing, is at first sight close to the composition that Girtin exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797 (TG1040). The slightly smaller watercolour, signed and dated 1796, differs from this work in a number of respects, however, and in ways that suggest that it was not painted by Girtin a year earlier, as Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak argued (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.136). The most striking difference is the presence in the foreground of a wholly fictitious pair of fluted Corinthian columns, which frame the view and support a massive curtain, which rises to the full height of the nave. This creates a wholly improbable and inappropriate conceit of a stage proscenium, from which the choir and parts of the transept open out as in a stage set, though this admittedly dramatises the different viewing position, a few metres further back and to the left. The form of the column and the great swag of drapery to the left, redolent of the more formal portraits of Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), strikes a particularly discordant note in what is otherwise a careful record of the mix of styles of a building that had seen more than its fair share of changes. The slightly different viewpoint thus adds the Norman transepts to the varied elements shown by Girtin in the 1796 view, including the thirteenth-century choir, the late Gothic high altar screen, and the seventeenth-century pews, balcony and pulpit, which were all added after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when part of the choir and crossing were converted into a parish church. Girtin’s later signed view also includes a wide range of lively figures, which gives the image a compelling sense that the building had an important role to play within its community, and, as a result, the view is more than just the architectural record shown here.
The owner of this watercolour, the Art Gallery of South Australia, has catalogued it as by a ‘follower of Thomas Girtin’, but, whilst there are important questions to be asked about the attribution, I doubt whether the view was produced by someone working in Girtin’s style from the dated watercolour, as the tag ‘follower’ implies. Instead, I want to suggest that the work was painted by Girtin, but significantly earlier than the date proposed by Girtin and Loshak, and that it was based on the work of another artist, presumably Edward Dayes (1763–1804). The crucial evidence here is the very early auction reference from November 1791 which notes a view of 'St Albans ... Girtin' sold with another of 'Windsor castle' for £1 4s (Greenwood, 1791, lot 49). This may not have been this relatively large scale watercolour, but the fact that the sale dates from the period of Girtin's apprenticeship to Dayes suggests that a sketch by his master provided the model for this work. Certainly, if the watercolour dates from, say, 1791–92, the introduction of the imaginary columns might be explained by Girtin’s immaturity and the fact that he had not yet seen the building he was depicting. The heavier style of the work – comparable with that of another early church interior framed by classical columns, London: Interior of St Stephen Walbrook, Looking East (TG0014) – is certainly very different from the 1796 view. This again suggests that it was produced, not by an inferior artist working in his style, but by a younger Girtin who depicted the building from a secondary source and was unable to breathe life into the results. An alternative thought, that this view of the interior of the abbey is by Dayes and was actually the source from which Girtin produced his 1796 watercolour, can be discounted, despite the fact that it provides an explanation for the stylistic differences between the two views. Thus, although Girtin could plausibly have brought his composition forward to omit the crossing in the interests of dramatic impact, the slightly different viewpoint of the earlier work means that the artist would have had to have invented details in the northern arcade of the choir, which is implausible given their fidelity to the original.
1796
The Interior of St Albans Abbey
TG1040
1790
London: Interior of St Stephen Walbrook, Looking East
TG0014