Girtin and Loshak dated the work to 1796, but knowing the identity of the building suggests an earlier date and establishes the fact that the watercolour must have been made after the drawing of another artist, as Girtin did not travel beyond the Borders on his trips to Scotland (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.154). An earlier date is supported by stylistic evidence, with the building itself bounded by an inflexible penned outline and the foliage rendered very schematically. The patterning on the bank in the foreground and the treatment of the water are more characteristic of the young Girtin, whilst the form of the signature allays any doubts about the attribution. It has not been possible to identify the source of Girtin’s image, though the antiquarian James Moore (1762–99), Girtin’s earliest patron, is one possibility. On his 1792 Scottish trip he drew Duff House and commissioned two watercolours of it from Girtin (TG0108 and TG0184), but there are no records of any view of Melville in his collection. A more probable scenario is that a young Girtin was commissioned to produce a finished watercolour from the sketch of an amateur for engraving and that, for whatever reason, it was not published.
(?) 1800
Chalfont House, from the North East, with Fishermen Netting the Broadwater
TG1564
(?) 1800
The North Front of Chalfont Lodge, Seen from the Lake
TG1561
1792 - 1793
Duff House, from the South
TG0108
1794
Duff House, from the River
TG0184
About this Work
Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) bought this early watercolour in 1912, when it was incorrectly titled ‘Newstead Abbey’. The identity of the building was altered to ‘Hafod (?)’ for the 1920 exhibition of Girtin’s works, before the owner changed his mind and titled it ‘Chalfont House, Buckinghamshire’, which he inscribed on the back of the drawing. Palser, the dealer Girtin’s ancestor bought the work from, does not record where he procured the watercolour. Therefore, it is not clear whether the artist’s descendant decided that the view showed Chalfont and concluded, as with Girtin’s depiction of the house (TG1564) and the lodge (TG1561), that the work had been commissioned by Thomas Hibbert (1744–1819), or whether he thought that the work came from the Hibbert collection and wrongly assumed that the building was old Chalfont House, prior to its remodelling in the 1790s. Whatever the case (and there is no evidence that the work was owned by the Hibbert family), Thomas Girtin and succeeding scholars were mistaken, as can be seen from the engraving of Chalfont House included in William Angus’ (1752–1821) Seats of the Nobility and Gentry, which shows a very different structure (see figure 1) (Angus, 1787–97). Another engraving from the same publication has made it possible to finally identify the building as Melville Castle, near Dalkeith, a few miles from Edinburgh (see figure 2). This was designed by James Playfair (1755–94) and was built in 1786–91 for Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742–1811). The engraved view is taken from the opposite direction, but the simple three-storey Gothic design, redolent of a toy fort, is clearly the same building shown by Girtin, in spite of his uncharacteristically poor perspective.