- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
- Date
- (?) 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and pen and ink on wove paper
- Dimensions
- 40.8 × 57.6 cm, 16 ⅛ × 22 ⅝ in
- Object Type
- On-the-spot Colour Sketch
- Subject Terms
- London Architecture; Urban Ruins
-
- Collection
-
- British Museum, London
- (G,7.213)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1410
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 151 as 'Leathersellers’ Hall ... unfinished', '1796'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001 and 2018
Provenance
John Charles Crowle (1738–1811); bequeathed as part of the fourteen volume set of Thomas Pennant's Some Account of London (3rd edn.), 1811
Bibliography
Binyon, 1898–1907, no.108
Place depicted
Other entries in London and the Home Counties, Together with Miscellaneous Studies and Views

Windsor Castle, from the River Thames
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum

Great Bookham Church, from the East
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust)

The Gateway, St Albans Abbey
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
Private Collection

An Interior View of St Albans Abbey, from the Crossing
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

The Interior of St Albans Abbey
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery

Windsor Castle and the Great Park, from the South West
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Great Park: Herne’s Oak with a Herd of Deer
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Stags Fighting amongst a Herd of Deer in Windsor Great Park, with the Castle in the Distance
Private Collection

A Herd of Deer in Richmond Park
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section One: Somerset House to Blackfriars Bridge
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Two: The Surrey Bank
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Three: Westminster Bridge to York Stairs
Private Collection

Westminster, from the West Corner of the Adelphi Terrace
Private Collection

The Thames with St Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Shipping on the Thames, Looking down Limehouse Reach towards Greenwich, with the Church of St Alfege in the Distance
Private Collection

A Haystack on a Farm, on the Road to Harrow-on-the-Hill
Private Collection

A Panoramic Landscape, near Norwood
Private Collection

Westminster Abbey, Seen from Green Park and the Queen's Basin
National Gallery of Art, Washington

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Paul's Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Untraced Works

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A River Scene, with Boats
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

An Imaginary Coast Scene with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea
Private Collection

London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

Turver’s Farm, Radwinter
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Farm with an Unidentified Windmill
Private Collection

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Private Collection, Norfolk

Trees and Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone-next-Dartford
British Museum, London

A Farmhouse in a Woodland Setting, Said to Be in Devon
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Farm Buildings, Probably in Surrey
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester

Tintern Village, Seen across the Forge Pond, Formerly Known as ‘The Mill-Pond’
Private Collection

A Picturesque House Overlooking a River, with Distant Windmills
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington

The West End of an Unidentified Church
Private Collection

Effingham Churchyard, Formerly Known as 'A Country Churchyard'
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

An Unidentified Windmill, Probably in Lambeth
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston

Unidentified Buildings, Herne Hill
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

Study of a Sailor on Board a Ship; A Fishing Boat
Private Collection

The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper's The Task
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

An Unidentified Subject, Probably from James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian
Tate, London

The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Study of a Woman Reading; A Slight Study of a Seated Woman
Private Collection

Portrait Study of a Man, Said to Be the Artist George Barret the Younger
Private Collection

A Study of a Lion from the Tower of London
Private Collection

An Open Field with a Cart and Horses, Known as ‘The Carter’
British Museum, London

A Church Seen across Fields, with Another Sketch Depicting a Woman
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

A Landscape with Figures by Railings
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Self-Portrait of the Artist at Work
British Museum, London

An Unidentified Landscape, with a Church amongst Trees
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Cottage and a Windmill Surrounded by Trees
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from the Thames
Private Collection

The Head of a Youth, Here Identified as Joseph Mallord William Turner
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Old London Bridge, with the Shot Tower in Construction, and St Olave's Church
Private Collection
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About this Work
This large-scale sketch of the exterior of the Leathersellers’ Hall in London is one of two views of the building that were acquired by John Charles Crowle (1738–1811) after Girtin’s death (the other being TG1411). The interior view of the hall shows the building stripped of its sixteenth-century fittings immediately prior to its demolition in 1799. Though Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak thought that this less worked, on-the-spot sketch dated from earlier than the other view purchased by Crowle, I suspect that it was the imminent destruction of the building that occasioned its production as well (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.154). What appear to be ladders are shown to the right of the drawing, and, as with the interior view, Girtin was presumably working against the clock to record a historic building before it disappeared, and it is unlikely that he would have gone to all the trouble of working on such a large scale, and with so much detail, without a reasonable expectation of orders for finished watercolours. These were most likely to come from the type of antiquarian patron that he had worked for early in his career, since the Leathersellers’ Hall was actually built within the dormitory of the ancient Benedictine nunnery attached to the church of St Helen Bishopsgate, and its impending destruction, not surprisingly, caused considerable controversy in those circles, not least because the process revealed a fine medieval vaulted undercroft that was also soon to be razed (see TG1411 figure 1). Chief amongst the critics of the removal of the hall – on the grounds that it was ‘too ruinous and expensive for repair’ – was James Peller Malcolm (1767–1815), and it is his print that illustrates the relationship between the church of St Helen and the part of the exterior of the hall depicted by Girtin (see figure 1) (Malcolm, 1802–7, vol.3, p.562). The hall, which is seen in Malcolm’s view parallel to the church’s west front, is entered from an ornate porch at the top of a flight of steps, and it is this feature that Girtin concentrates on, using a brush and ink to pick out the architectural details and to record the shadows cast by the afternoon sun.
No commission for a watercolour of this view seems to have been forthcoming, however, unlike the rather more dramatic interior view of the half-ruined hall. Although very different in terms of their original function, the sketch and the finished watercolour were to be reunited when they were acquired by Crowle, who used them both as extra-illustrations to his multi-volume copy of Thomas Pennant’s (1726–98) Some Account of London (Pennant, 1793). The sketch is interleaved, together with four prints of the hall, into volume twelve of the rebound text from the 1793 edition – that is, from before the building’s destruction. In all, Crowle assembled over three thousand images of the city’s topography as well as of the people and historical events associated with it, binding them into fourteen folio volumes (Adams, 1982, pp.123–39). Girtin’s sketch, which is actually one of the largest he ever executed, did not quite fit into the outsized volumes, however, and it had to be folded, with the unfortunate consequence seen here.
(?) 1799
London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
TG1411