This view of ancient ruins near the river Garigliano to the north of Naples, with the coastal town of Gaeta seen in the distance, was copied from a composition by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) (see figure 1). It was produced at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), where Girtin and his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) were employed across three winters, probably between 1794 and 1797, to make ‘finished drawings’ from the ‘Copies’ of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings of Cozens’. The majority of the resulting watercolours saw the two artists engaged in a unique collaboration; as they later recalled, Girtin ‘drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’ and, as the diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) reported, Turner received ‘3s. 6d each night’, though ‘Girtin did not say what He had’ (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).¹

Cozens’ on-the-spot sketch is inscribed ‘Near the Garigliano – Decr.8’, with the distant ‘Gaeta’ also marked on the image (Bell and Girtin, 1935, no.344). The sketch is found in the fifth of the seven sketchbooks from Cozens’ second Italian trip, which saw the artist travel to Naples in 1782 in the company of his patron William Beckford (1760–1844), though it was actually made on the return journey to Rome at the beginning of December. It is unlikely that the Monro School watercolour was copied directly from the sketch by Cozens, however. It would have been uncharacteristic of Beckford to have lent the sketchbooks to Monro, and the existence of a large number of tracings of their contents by Cozens himself suggests that the patron, rather than the artist, retained the books. An album put together by Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827), now in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, includes more than seventy tracings from on-the-spot drawings in the first three of the sketchbooks, and these provided the basis for at least thirty Monro School works. There are only five tracings from the next three books, but there is no reason to think that others did not exist, and it was presumably from these lost copies by Cozens that as many as thirty-five more watercolours were produced by Girtin and Turner, including this view of ruins, which may be part of the site at Minturno. The fact that the Monro School copies never follow either the shading or the distribution of light seen in the on-the-spot sketches, though they always replicate the basic outlines, further suggests that Girtin and Turner worked from tracings of the sketchbook views.

The majority of the Italian scenes sold at Monro’s posthumous sale were described as being by Turner alone, and this generally remained the case until the publication of Andrew Wilton’s pioneering article in 1984, since when the joint attribution of the Monro School works to Turner and Girtin has increasingly become the norm (Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). In this case, however, the work was attributed to Girtin alone when it appeared on the art market in 2000. Monro’s posthumous sale included a number of ‘views in Italy’ that were listed as being by Girtin, including ‘Three, by Girtin, after Cozens’ (Exhibitions: Christie’s, 2 July 1833, lot 35). However, this work does not resemble stylistically the Monro School watercolours that have the strongest claims to be by Girtin alone, such as Lake Vico (TG0635) or Vallombrosa Abbey (TG0669), and I can see no reason to conclude that this example departs from the practice employed in the overwhelming proportion of copies after Cozens’ sketches (as Girtin and Turner reported to Farington in 1798). Girtin’s involvement in its production was therefore fairly basic, tracing the outlines from a Cozens drawing; it was Turner’s more onerous task to obscure the essentially mechanical practice of replication and produce something that approximates to a finished work. It is perhaps significant that when the work reappeared at auction later in 2000, it did so with an attribution solely to Turner.

1794 - 1797

Lake Vico

TG0635

1797 - 1798

Vallombrosa Abbey

TG0669