- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- An Overshot Mill
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour, bodycolour and scratching out on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 21.7 × 29.1 cm, 8 ½ × 11 ½ in
- Inscription
‘Girtin’ lower left, by Thomas Girtin (the signature has been cut, suggesting that it once extended onto an original mount which has been lost)
- Object Type
- Exhibition Watercolour; Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Picturesque Vernacular; Wind and Water Mills
-
- Collection
-
- Leeds Art Gallery
- (13.357/53)
- Versions
-
An Overshot Mill
(TG1428)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1427
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 258ii as 'An Overshot Mill in Devon'; '1798'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001, 2002 and February 2020
Provenance
Samuel Woodburn (1786–1853) (lent to London, 1824); his posthumous sale, Christie’s, 24 May 1854, lot 780 as 'A watermill'; bought by 'Bale', £5; Charles Sackville Bale (1791–1880) (lent to London, 1871; London, 1875); his posthumous sale, Christie’s, 13 May 1881, lot 96 as 'An Overshot Water-Mill in Devonshire'; bought by 'Palser', £34 13s; J. Palser & Sons; bought by Edward Cohen (1817–86), 1881; then by bequest to his niece, Annie Sophia Poulter (c.1846–1924); then by descent to Edward Alexander Poulter (1883–1973); J. Palser & Sons; bought by Norman Lupton, March 1929; Agnes Lupton (1874–1950) and Norman Darnton Lupton (1875–1953); bequeathed to the Museum, 1953
Exhibition History
(?) Royal Academy, London, 1798, no.677 as ’A mill in Devonshire’; London, 1824, no.16 as ’A Water-Mill’; London, 1871, no.92; London, 1875, no.66 as 'Overshot Water Mill'; Agnew’s, 1931, no.98; Paris, 1938, no.114; British Council, 1949, no.56; London, 1951, no.487; Agnew’s, 1953a, no.39; Geneva, 1955, no.66; London, 1960, no.58; Leeds, 1972, no.38; Manchester, 1975, no.39; Tochigi, 1992, no.42; Leeds, 1995, no.36 as ’An Overshot Mill, Devon’; London, 2002, no.139
Bibliography
Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.66; Bury, 1960, p.16; Hemingway, 1992, p.23
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 watercolour, one of two similar views of a picturesque thatched watermill (the other being TG1428), has been identified as the work shown by Girtin at the Royal Academy exhibition in 1798 as ‘A mill in Devonshire’ (Royal Academy, London, 1798, no.677). However, neither this work nor the other version, which has been incorrectly titled ‘A Mill at Pembury, Kent’, includes any evidence of their location, and I suspect that if it was Girtin’s exhibit then the title was designed to signify that the view was rural and unspoilt, rather than indicating a specific location. Indeed, as with so many similar scenes that Girtin painted around 1798–99, the mill depicted here might just as easily have been the product of the artist’s imagination, made in response to the demand for picturesque compositions, rather than having been the outcome of a sketch made during his West Country tour in 1797, as was definitely the case with Castle Mill, Berry Pomeroy (TG1268). Certainly, a watermill, and the simple ‘overshot wheel’ in particular, was held by Girtin’s contemporaries to be an ideal subject for a landscape artist, since it ‘is capable of affording picturesqueness to the most formal spot, and of augmenting it in the most romantic’ manner (Stoddart, 1801, vol.1, p.206). The pleasures derived from viewing mills were also deemed to go beyond ‘picturesque effect’ to include a wide range of pleasing associations, and it was this double function that presumably attracted collectors to this aspect of Girtin’s work (Williams, 1804, p.16). In this case, the artist conflates the image of the mill, as a symbol of nature harnessed to the service of humans, with a domestic scene of timeless tranquillity. People and nature are shown at one, labour is accomplished without strain, and the rural life is presented as one of sunny contentment.
The work is generally in good condition, with only a few areas of the foliage to the top having suffered, and these seem to have been added as an afterthought as the blue of the sky shows through. Likewise, the white bodycolour used to create highlights on the figure and elsewhere has become too prominent, particularly in comparison with the smoke issuing from the chimney, which has been scratched out to no great effect. Both of these methods of creating highlights were associated by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak with works dating to around 1798, and they ascribed this work an important position in their analysis of ‘Girtin’s stylistic development’ (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.66). Although there are no dated watercolours to back up their assertion, I suspect that this is broadly correct, and there is indeed a substantial group of picturesque subjects from around 1798–99 that are characterised by richly worked colour, often given texture by the use of bodycolour and scratching out, all of which is designed to match the thick vegetation, which at times threatens to overwhelm the vernacular buildings depicted. I am not sure about the wisdom of the authors’ use of the term ‘hylozoic’ to describe the effect, referring to the philosophical concept that matter is in some sense alive, but there is indeed a ‘pervading atmosphere of lush proliferation’ about works such as this, which, as the same authors perceptively note, tends towards an ‘over-ripe density and excessive picturesqueness’ (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, pp.66–67).
The lower part of Girtin’s signature has been cut, suggesting that the watercolour was originally surrounded by the artist’s own washline mount and that this has subsequently been removed, taking with it part of the inscription.
1798 - 1799
An Overshot Mill
TG1428
1798 - 1799
Castle Mill, Berry Pomeroy
TG1268