This fragment of a drawing, showing the upper part of the north-west tower of the great west front of Peterborough Cathedral, was cut from an on-the-spot sketch that Girtin made on his visit to the city in 1794 (TG1014). The drawing, in its original state, was used as the basis of two watercolours (TG1018 and TG1019), and initially for a work dated 1794 (TG1017), which was commissioned by Girtin’s earliest patron, the antiquarian and amateur artist James Moore (1762–99), who had accompanied the artist on his tour of the major cathedral towns in the Midlands. Aimed at the market for accurate representations of the nation’s picturesque Gothic buildings, Girtin’s watercolours of the facade of Peterborough Cathedral carefully follow his detailed pencil drawing. However, a couple of years later, when he came to paint a final version of the composition (TG1020), Girtin returned to his sketch and made a startling alteration, the result of which is the fragment shown here. Girtin thus cut his original sketch, which correctly shows the north-west tower with six rows of arcades, and added an extra level to increase the overall height of the structure and, in consequence, make a rather more dramatic composition. It seems that Girtin was looking at ways in which to move on from the accurate, if somewhat dry, depiction of the monument that he had realised for Moore, who had specialised antiquarian interests. In the event, Girtin chose to emphasise the building’s monumental quality by developing the potential offered by the close, oblique viewpoint, and he abruptly terminated the tower to the left so that, in the viewer’s imagination at least, it appears to continue beyond the edge of the paper. Girtin’s act of cutting a detailed on-the-spot sketch and replacing it with a fictitious substitute therefore neatly symbolises a crucial shift in the artist’s practice – away from a dependency on the antiquarian market to a different clientele who valued pictorial drama over factual accuracy.

(?) 1794

The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral

TG1014

1794

The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral

TG1018

(?) 1794

The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral

TG1019

1794

The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral

TG1017

(?) 1796

The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral

TG1020