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Works Thomas Girtin after (?) James Moore

Newport Castle, Monmouthshire

1795 - 1796

Primary Image: TG0316: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), after (?) James Moore (1762–99), Newport Castle, Monmouthshire, 1795–96, graphite and watercolour on card (laid paper), 7.9 × 12.4 cm, 3 ⅛ × 4 ⅞ in. Private Collection.

Photo courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum (All Rights Reserved)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) after (?) James Moore (1762-1799)
Title
  • Newport Castle, Monmouthshire
Date
1795 - 1796
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on card (laid paper)
Dimensions
7.9 × 12.4 cm, 3 ⅛ × 4 ⅞ in
Object Type
Work after an Amateur Artist
Subject Terms
Castle Ruins; South Wales

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0316
Description Source(s)
Girtin Archive Photograph

Provenance

Squire Gallery, London, 1954

About this Work

This watercolour showing Newport Castle in Monmouthshire, South Wales, is known only from a poor black and white photograph found in the Girtin Archive (12/X), where it is described as being in ‘Pencil and grey wash only’ and dated, rather implausibly, to 1790–91. The fact that the work is painted on card (possibly made from layers of laid paper) measuring 3 ⅛ × 4 ⅞ in (7.9 × 12.4 cm) suggests a later date, and that it was produced for Girtin’s important early patron Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833). Girtin produced a sizeable group of watercolours of mainly antiquarian subjects for Monro, including a view of Leiston Abbey from the same unrecorded collection (TG0327), all of which were executed on a small scale on the same support. About twenty or so of these works were bought after Monro’s death by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), Girtin’s collaborator at this date, and they are now part of the Turner Bequest. But other examples, which typically show some of the nation’s less well-known medieval monuments, still regularly turn up at auction, where they are often misattributed because they do not conform to the standard type of work that Girtin produced for Monro in collaboration with Turner.

Newport Castle, Monmouthshire

The majority of the small cards from the Monro collection were made after pencil drawings that Girtin copied from the sketches of either his first significant patron, the amateur artist and antiquarian James Moore (1762–99), or his master, Edward Dayes (1763–1804), and there is no question that he ever visited Newport. Moore toured South Wales in the summer of 1789, however, and he subsequently employed a number of professional artists, including Girtin’s master, to realise some of his sketches, either for publication as aquatints or as finished watercolours. Dayes’ watercolour of Newport (see figure 1) was therefore almost certainly made from the same lost or untraced on-the-spot sketch that Girtin worked from. And, if Girtin followed his general practice of copying Moore’s drawing prior to the production of his smaller watercolours for Monro, it is possible that his pencil drawing will reappear in due course.

1795 - 1796

Leiston Abbey

TG0327

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

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