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Works Thomas Girtin after (?) John Henderson

Beached Vessels in Dover Harbour, the Castle in the Distance

1795 - 1796

Primary Image: TG0838: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), after (?) John Henderson (1764–1843), Beached Vessels in Dover Harbour, the Castle in the Distance, 1795–96, graphite on wove paper, 26.6 × 20.7 cm, 10 ½ × 8 ⅝ in. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (WA1954.70.211).

Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (All Rights Reserved)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) after (?) John Henderson (1764-1843)
Title
  • Beached Vessels in Dover Harbour, the Castle in the Distance
Date
1795 - 1796
Medium and Support
Graphite on wove paper
Dimensions
26.6 × 20.7 cm, 10 ½ × 8 ⅝ in
Object Type
Monro School Copy; Outline Drawing; Work after an Amateur Artist
Subject Terms
Coasts and Shipping; Dover and Kent

Collection
Versions
Beached Vessels in Dover Harbour, the Castle in the Distance (TG0812)
Catalogue Number
TG0838
Description Source(s)
Viewed in 2019

Provenance

John Postle Heseltine (1843–1929); his posthumous sale, Sotheby’s, 29 May 1935, lot 313; volume bought by Bernard Squire, £32; Dr Grete Ring (1887–1952); bequeathed, 1954

Bibliography

Brown, 1982, p.335, no.732 as 'Harbour Scene at Dover'

About this Work

This drawing of beached vessels in Dover harbour, with the castle in the distance, is identical in composition to a monochrome watercolour in the collection of Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts (TG0812). The natural assumption is that the outline drawing was made on the spot and that it formed the basis for the watercolour. However, the watercolour was produced as a collaboration between Girtin and his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) at the home of their mutual patron Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), along with a substantial number of other views of Dover. Girtin does not seem to have visited Dover and, although Turner did make the trip in 1793, the majority of their views of the port were copied from the sketches of Monro’s neighbour, the amateur John Henderson (1764–1843), who lent his ‘outlines for this purpose’ (Farington, Diary, 30 December 1794). As the artists themselves recalled to the diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821), ‘Girtin drew in outlines’, copied or traced from Henderson’s works, and ‘Turner washed in the effects’ to create the numerous monochrome copies that closely resemble TG0812 (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).1

Girtin’s drawing is clearly not an on-the-spot sketch, therefore, but what exactly was its function? There are, I suggest, two options. The first is that it was just the initial stage in the production of a Monro School copy of a Henderson view of Dover, abandoned before Turner began applying the washes of grey and blue that would have created the characteristic appearance of a Monro School copy, somewhere between an on-the-spot colour sketch and a studio watercolour. The second option, and the view I favour, is that Girtin made a separate copy of Henderson’s drawing for his own use, perhaps as a model for a future finished watercolour. Overlays of images of the pencil drawing and the watercolour shows that the lines are perfectly matched, suggesting that there was no reason to abandon one drawing only to exactly repeat the lines on a second sheet that was then coloured. Indeed, so close are the forms that there is little doubt that both were traced from a lost Henderson original. There is no way of proving it, but I suspect that Girtin was so taken with Henderson’s characteristically unconventional composition, with the prow of the boat looming upwards to the right, that he made this copy for himself, having first traced the outline for his collaborator to colour.

Image Overlay

1795 - 1796

Beached Vessels in Dover Harbour, the Castle in the Distance

TG0812

1795 - 1796

Beached Vessels in Dover Harbour, the Castle in the Distance

TG0812

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

Footnotes

  1. 1 The full diary entry, giving crucial details of the artists’ work at Monro’s house, is transcribed in the Documents section of the Archive (1798 – Item 2).

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