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Works Thomas Girtin and Joseph Mallord William Turner after John Robert Cozens

Lake Vico, from the Hill of Viterbo

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0636: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), after (?) John Robert Cozens (1752–97), Lake Vico, from the Hill of Viterbo, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, on an early mount, 17.4 × 24 cm, 6 ⅞ × 9 ½ in. Tate, Turner Bequest CCCLXXIII, 63 (D36476).

Photo courtesy of Tate (All Rights Reserved)

Artist's source: John Robert Cozens (1752–97), Lake Vico from the Hill of Viterbo, graphite and varnish on laid paper, 17.1 × 24.4 cm, 6 ¾ × 9 ⁹⁄₁₆ in. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1977.14.4543).

Photo courtesy of Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (Public Domain)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) after John Robert Cozens (1752-1797)
Title
  • Lake Vico, from the Hill of Viterbo
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper, on an early mount
Dimensions
17.4 × 24 cm, 6 ⅞ × 9 ½ in
Mount Dimensions
36.3 × 49.5 cm, 14 ¼ × 19 ½ in
Inscription

‘Lago Di Vico from the Hill of Viterbo’ on the back, by Thomas Girtin (pasted down, but transcribed by a later hand on the lower right of the mount)

Part of
Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy
Subject Terms
Italian View: The Roman Campagna; Lake Scenery

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0636
Description Source(s)
Viewed in November 2017

Provenance

Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833); his posthumous sale, Christie's, 28 June 1833, lot 78 as ‘A book containing 62 interesting sketches in the neighbourhood of Rome and Naples, by Turner, in Indian ink and blue’; bought by Thomas Griffith on behalf of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), £21; accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856

Bibliography

Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1230 as '"Lago di Vico from the Hill of Viterbo"' by Thomas Girtin; Bell and Girtin, 1935, p.48; Turner Online as 'Lago Di Vico from the Hill of Viterbo' by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin (Accessed 08/09/2022)

About this Work

This view of Lake Vico, south of Viterbo in Lazio, is mounted in an album of watercolours bought by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) at the posthumous sale of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833) (Exhibitions: Christie’s, 28 June 1833, lot 78). The sixty-four drawings were the outcome of a unique collaboration between Girtin and Turner working together at Monro’s London home at the Adelphi. Here the artists 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’ and other artists, amateur and professional, either from Monro’s collection or lent for the purpose. As the two young artists later recalled, Girtin generally ‘drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’, which may account for the generally monochrome appearance of the works, 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

Monro’s posthumous sale of 1833 contained only twenty or so sketches by John Robert Cozens (1752–97), so the patron must have borrowed the majority of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings’ copied by Girtin and Turner. In this case, the source of the watercolour, a simple outline inscribed ‘Lago Di Vico from the Hill of Viterbo’, was almost certainly purchased at the sale of ‘Mr COZENS’ in July 1794 by Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827).2 As Kim Sloan has noted, Beaumont mounted ‘215 “tracings” or drawings on oiled paper’ in an album that he presumably lent to Monro, and it was from this collection, now at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, that the two young artists produced more than fifty watercolours (Sloan and Joyner, 1993, pp.89–91). The outline on which this watercolour is based (see the source image above) is part of a group of sketches that seem to have been made by Cozens during his stay in and around Rome from November 1776 through to March 1779, though, as Sloan has pointed out, it is also possible that they were traced from drawings made by his father, Alexander Cozens (1717–86), on his earlier trip (Sloan, 1986, pp.127–28). Certainly, none of the compositions in this group of drawings were realised as watercolours by John, and this possibly encouraged Monro to commission a finished work for his collection. However, the need to work from such a slight source means that the outcome was markedly less finished than another, larger view of the lake (TG0635). It has not been possible to locate the ‘Hill of Viterbo’ (as inscribed on the sketch), though it is clear that the view of the volcanic lake is from the north west.

The album containing this drawing was sold in 1833 as the work of Turner, but the cataloguer of the Turner Bequest, Alexander Finberg, thought that Girtin alone was responsible for the watercolours, whilst more recently Andrew Wilton has established their joint authorship (Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1230; Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). Identifying the division of labour within Monro School drawings is considerably helped, as here, when the colour washes leave much of the pencil work showing through. However, the quality of the pencil work and, indeed, the colour washes too is hardly of the highest standard. As with the comparable view Lake Bolsena (TG0637), this raises the question of whether the use of such a basic source encouraged the artists to take shortcuts, especially if, as seems likely, the sketch itself was simply traced by Girtin. This is certainly the conclusion that I take from the striking congruence that is revealed by overlaying images of the two works; it was therefore left to Turner to obscure the essentially mechanical task of replication in which the artists were engaged. But Turner too may have practised his own form of labour saving by working on more than one drawing at a time, moving from sheet to sheet, adding a single tone to each in turn, and this would help to explain the similar feel between this work and the Bolsena view.

Image Overlay

1794 - 1797

Lake Vico

TG0635

1794 - 1797

Lake Bolsena

TG0637

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).
  2. 2 A full record of the sale is available in the Documents section of the Archive (1794 – Item 1)

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