- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- (?) Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- An Unidentified Subject, Probably from James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian
- Date
- 1799 - 1800
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 27.2 × 41.2 cm, 10 ¾ × 16 ¼ in
- Inscription
‘T. Girtin’ lower left, by (?) Thomas Girtin
- Object Type
- Sketching Society Drawing
- Subject Terms
- Literary Subject
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1503
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 339 as 'Subject from Ossian'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001
Provenance
Richard Johnson; his sale, J. C. Platt, London, 26 April 1912, lot 880 as 'a pencil and sepia study' (sold with Z1503/1); bought by Paul Oppé (1878–1957), 1912, £2; then by descent; bought by Tate as part of the Oppé Collection with assistance from the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund, 1996
Exhibition History
Chelsea, 1947, no.25; Sheffield, 1952, no.33; Agnew’s, 1953a, no.40; London, 1958a, no.158; London, 1959, no.721; Ottawa, 1961, no.48
Bibliography
Oppé, 1957–59, pp.96–97, no.135; Okun, 1967, pp.336–37; Hamburg, 1974, p.27
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
Footnotes
Revisions & Feedback
The website will be updated from time to time and, when changes are made, a PDF of the previous version of each page will be archived here for consultation and citation.
Please help us to improve this catalogue
If you have information, a correction or any other suggestions to improve this catalogue, please contact us.
About this Work
This monochrome study was described by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak as a ‘Subject from Ossian’ showing a ‘Highland outpost watching the mists and mountains at dawn’ and they noted that it was ‘Probably a “Sketching Club” subject’ made by Girtin around 1799–1800’ (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.180). The drawing, though larger than the only Sketching Society subjects that can with some certainty be attributed to Girtin (TG1501 and TG1505), does indeed seem to have been executed at the gathering of amateurs and young professional watercolourists that Girtin is documented as having visited on twelve occasions in the latter part of 1799, including the night of 9 November when, as host, he chose a passage from Oliver Goldsmith’s The Traveller (1764) (Sketching Society, Minute Book).1 However, the signature, which takes the same form as the inscription seen on another dubious monochrome drawing, Sunrise on the Sea (see figure 1), is not in Girtin’s hand, and the attribution to the artist by Girtin and Loshak is speculative at best. The pencil work is particularly tentative and the application of the washes neither creates a credible space nor produces any attractive decorative effects. I suspect that the work was instead created by one of the amateur members of the group, Thomas Richard Underwood (1772–1836), John Charles Denham (1777–1867) or Thomas George Worthington (unknown dates), and its slight appearance is surely inconsistent with an evening’s work by a professional artist.
The subject of the work is also not without its difficulties. James Macpherson (1736–96) began publishing his ‘translations’ of the ancient epic poems of the legendary bard Ossian in 1760, and their subsequent success is reflected in the fact that extracts from his works were chosen for illustration at the first three meetings of the Sketching Society, this despite the fact that there was an increasing belief by this date that Macpherson’s tales of the great heroic age of Gaelic culture were little more than elaborate fabrications (Winter, 1973–74, p.132). The selection on 9 September of a passage from Temora (book 4), which describes how a band of warriors ‘came to the hall of the King, where it rose in the midst of rocks’, may have been the inspiration for this scene, but equally it may have been the Ossianic subject chosen by Girtin himself on 27 May (Sketching Society, Minute Book). An unattributed drawing that contains the same elements of rocks, water and soldiers is inscribed ‘at Mr. Girtins May – 27’ (see figure 2). The members of the Sketching Society, not just Girtin, were clearly engrossed by the romantic tales of Ossian and his followers, so much so that Robert Ker Porter (1777–1842), travelling with Underwood in the summer of 1799, described the mountain scenery he encountered in North Wales as requiring the skills of ‘an Osian’ to convey its grandeur (Porter, 1799, f.33). The sublime lakeside ruins of Dolbadarn Castle, ‘perceptable upon the rock it stands upon … presented to my ideas from every circumstance, a most perfect scene, and such as Ossian knew’, he concluded (Porter, 1799, f.73).
The other monochrome subject, Sunrise on the Sea, which came from the same source and bears the same misleading signature as the subject from Ossian, appears to have been painted by a different, though equally inept, anonymous artist. There is no indication of the subject, though because it is on paper of the same size it is conceivable that it too was made at the Sketching Society by one of the amateur members.
1799
The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper’s ‘The Task’
TG1501
(?) 1799
The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’
TG1505