- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) after Michael Rooker (1746-1801)
- Title
-
- Caesar’s Tower, Warwick Castle
- Date
- 1794 - 1795
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
- Dimensions
- 34.1 × 26.7 cm, 13 ⅜ × 10 ½ in
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; The Midlands
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG0239
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 121 as 'Warwick Castle'; '1795'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001 and 2016
Provenance
James Moore (1762–99); his widow, Mary Moore (née Howett) (d.1835); bequeathed to Anne Miller (1802–90); bequeathed to Edward Mansel Miller (1829–1912); bequeathed to Helen Louisa Miller (1842–1915); bought by the Museum, 1916
Exhibition History
Manchester, 1975, no.14
Bibliography
Bell, 1915–17, pp.74–76; Davies, 1924, pl.9; Mayne, 1949, p.99; Hawcroft, 1975, p.16; Brown, 1982, p.332, no.723; Wilton, 1984a, p.19
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About this Work
This upright view of Caesar’s Tower, on the southern flank of Warwick Castle, was taken from the Castle Mill on the river Avon. Earlier commentators, amongst them Francis Hawcroft, argued that the work resulted from Girtin’s tour of the Midlands in the summer of 1794 in the company of his earliest patron, the amateur James Moore (1762–99). Hawcroft also suggested that the work is an ‘unfinished study’, presumably begun on the spot, and that the muted colouring was just the second stage of its production, which would have been completed with the addition of full colour to the ‘monochrome … underpainting’ (Hawcroft, 1975, p.16). In fact, there is no conclusive evidence that Girtin visited Warwick, especially as the work that has been identified as his 1795 Royal Academy exhibit, Warwick Castle, is almost certainly one of a group of important early commissions from 1792–93, all of which were made after the work of other artists. More plausibly, Andrew Wilton has suggested that this watercolour is one of a number of ‘monochrome copies’ Girtin made after an earlier visitor to the castle and that it is therefore closely linked to a view of the ruined great hall at Kenilworth Castle (TG0288) (Wilton, 1984a, p.19).
Edward Dayes (1763–1804), Girtin’s master and teacher, certainly visited Warwick; however, although the young artist copied many of Dayes’ compositions rather than travelling to the locations himself, in this case Girtin seems to have based his work on Michael Rooker (1746–1801) whose Ceasar’s Tower, Warwick Castle (see the source image above), was shown at the Royal Academy in 1794. Girtin’s subdued palette reflects the work’s origin in Rooker’s monochrome watercolour, therefore, and in other respects he adopts stylistic features from that artist rather than Dayes. The treatment of the masonry to the left, in particular, replicates Rooker’s characteristic use of blocks of darker colour over a light ground to shape the individual stones, though the detailed pencil work showing through the rapidly added washes elsewhere is authentically Girtin. The young artist’s principal point of departure from his model, in addition to the compression of the composition, sees the complete exclusion of the figures that Rooker introduced to show that the view of the tower was taken from a working mill. Girtin’s more compact composition, with added vegetation comparable to the earlier Warwick view (TG0168), is consequently stripped of its human associations and the castle seems to spring organically from its setting of wood, rock and water, with the dark opening of the sluice adding an uncharacteristic threatening note.
1794 - 1795
The Ruins of the Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
TG0288
1792 - 1793
The Gatehouse and Barbican, Warwick Castle
TG0168