This view of the west range of St Agatha’s Abbey at Easby on the River Swale in Yorkshire, the smaller of two versions of the composition (TG1060), was probably made after a sketch that Girtin executed on his first tour to the northern counties, in 1796, when he is known to have visited the nearby town of Richmond. The riverside scene is a telling example of the artist’s changing priorities in the year or so immediately following his 1796 visit to Yorkshire, whereby he chose to show the relatively nondescript part of the ruins that contained the abbey’s guest house over the architecturally more impressive ivy-clad remains of the fourteenth-century refectory, which is almost totally obscured by a lumpish modern cottage in the foreground. Girtin’s viewpoint appears to be on the other side of the river but, as David Hill has shown in relation to a comparable view by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) (see TG1058 figure 1), it is actually on the near bank just before a bend in the river, which generates a broad uninterrupted foreground of water (Hill, 1996, p.42). In a composition that is equally about the river scenery and the landscape setting as its ostensibly antiquarian subject, Girtin was therefore able to lavish as much attention on the reflections in the water as on the buildings and their attendant vegetation. Turner’s watercolour usefully helps to illustrate the way in which Girtin changed the line of the water and pushed the cottage closer to the ruins in order to achieve the effect he was seeking, with the humble building apparently dwarfing the ruins beyond and the river uniting the various elements of the composition.

As was the case with the larger version of the composition (TG1058), this watercolour was not included by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak in their catalogue (Girtin and Loshak, 1954). More recently it has been attributed to an anonymous 'follower' of Girtin and initially this is how I described it. However, a recent opportunity to view the work has confirmed a growing suspicion that this too is by Girtin. The drawing, which is in excellent condition, has a number of features in common with a group of northern subjects that Girtin produced for the publisher Rudolph Ackermann (1764–1834) to be reproduced as aquatints. Ackermann’s Four Views from Nature: From Drawings by Mr. Girtin (1800) were made from similarly sized watercolours of York Minster (TG1051) and Barnard Castle (TG1068). But it is the watercolour of Etal Castle (TG1115) which is particularly close in terms of its cool palette and the summary treatment of the foliage and the reflections in the water, certainly enough to suggest that the Easby view is from around the same time, 1796–97, and that it too was conceived with a reproductive print in mind. An authentic-looking signature to the right confirms the impression that, although this is clearly not a work of the highest quality, it is by Girtin and not a follower or copyist. The ambiguous form of the figure to the right, who may or may not be bending down to fill a container with water, is arguably characteristic of a more relaxed approach to works commissioned by the print trade.

1797 - 1798

Easby Abbey, from the River Swale

TG1059

1797 - 1799

Easby Abbey, from the River Swale

TG1058

1797 - 1799

Easby Abbey, from the River Swale

TG1058

1796 - 1797

York Minster, from the South East, Layerthorpe Bridge and Postern to the Right

TG1051

1796 - 1797

Barnard Castle, from the River Tees

TG1068

1796 - 1797

Etal Castle

TG1115