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Works Thomas Girtin after (?) James Moore

Saltwood Castle: The Gatehouse

(?) 1795

Primary Image: TG0262: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), after (?) James Moore (1763–1804), Saltwood Castle: The Gatehouse, (?) 1795, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, 18 × 13.5 cm, 6 ⅞ × 5 ¼ in. Private Collection.

Photo courtesy of Bonhams

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) after (?) James Moore (1762-1799)
Title
  • Saltwood Castle: The Gatehouse
Date
(?) 1795
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
Dimensions
18 × 13.5 cm, 6 ⅞ × 5 ¼ in
Object Type
Studio Watercolour; Work after an Amateur Artist
Subject Terms
Castle Ruins; Dover and Kent

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0262
Description Source(s)
Auction catalogue

Provenance

James Moore (1762–99); his widow, Mary Moore (née Howett) (d.1835); bequeathed to Anne Miller (1802–90); bequeathed to Edward Mansel Miller (1829–1912); bequeathed to Helen Louisa Miller (1842–1915); bought by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960), 1912, £8; sold through the Leicester Galleries, London, 1912, £15 15s; ... Christie’s, 20 November 1979, lot 120 as by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), £350; Bonhams, 4 November 2003, lot 27 as by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)

Exhibition History

London, 1912, no.33

About this Work

Gatehouse, Saltwood Castle

This view of the fourteenth-century gatehouse of Saltwood Castle in Kent was attributed to Girtin’s great contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) when it last appeared in public at an auction (Bonhams, 4 November 2003, lot 27). Nonetheless, there are strong grounds for believing that it is in fact by Girtin and that the watercolour was painted after a lost sketch by the artist’s early patron, the antiquarian and amateur artist James Moore (1762–99). In the first instance, although the evidence is not watertight, it is likely that the watercolour is the hitherto untraced Saltwood subject in ‘blue grey’ that was exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in 1912 as by Girtin (London, 1912, no.33). The sale included a substantial group of drawings and watercolours consigned by the artist’s ancestor and biographer Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) who had bought more than fifty works from the descendants of James Moore earlier in the year and was no doubt seeking to recoup some of his investment. Girtin’s descendant priced the watercolour at £15 15s for a drawing he had paid £8 for a few months previously. It is not known who the purchaser was or why and when a change of attribution occurred during the interval between the sale and its reappearance on the art market in 1979, though the inclusion of a watercolour of the composition by Edward Dayes (1763–1804) at a selling exhibition in 1968 may have had something to do with it (see figure 1).1 Dayes, it seems, worked from the same lost sketch by Moore that was the origin for this watercolour and so, as with another Saltwood subject (see TG0301 figure 1), the source would have been a pencil outline made on the amateur’s tour to Kent and Sussex in the summer of 1795 (TG0301).

If this new attribution of the view of the gatehouse at Saltwood is accepted it would join a stylistically coherent group of Sussex and Kent subjects of antiquarian interest by Girtin that were worked after Moore’s sketches and which all employ a limited blue/grey palette. In addition to the Saltwood scene there are two views of Rye, showing the Ypres Tower (TG0342) and the Landgate (TG0223) as well as a slightly larger view of the gatehouse of Battle Abbey (TG0277a). Stylistically, the key to a Girtin attribution in all of these instances is the characteristic pencil work seen under the monochrome washes. A highly flexible, discontinuous outline in which the touch varies subtly in intensity, combined with an inventive, decorative mark making that emphasises surface texture with no recourse to shading, characterises the group. The addition of simple washes of colour is hardly distinctive to Girtin and might equally be attributed to Turner at this date, but the fact that the subject of all four drawings, together with their provenances, can with varying degrees of certainty be linked to Moore, rules out the latter’s involvement. Although the attributional issues have not been fully resolved, it seems that Girtin was responsible for producing a significant group of views of the gatehouse at Saltwood for Moore using his patron’s sketches, including two carefully worked watercolours (TG0301 figure 1 and TG0259), this monochrome study and three pencil drawings, the latter two of which were probably worked on by both men (TG0224, TG0224a and TG0301). It is not clear why the subject so appealed to Moore, though perhaps it was its associations with the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket made more compelling by its current picturesque decay and bathetic status as a farmhouse.

(?) 1795

Saltwood Castle: The Gatehouse from a Farmyard

TG0301

(?) 1795

Saltwood Castle: The Gatehouse from a Farmyard

TG0301

1795 - 1796

The Ypres Tower, Rye

TG0342

(?) 1795

The Landgate, Rye

TG0223

1795 - 1796

The Gatehouse, Battle Abbey

TG0277a

(?) 1795

Saltwood Castle: The Gatehouse from a Farmyard

TG0301

1795 - 1796

The Ruined Gatehouse, Saltwood Castle, Seen from the North

TG0259

(?) 1795

The Gatehouse, Saltwood Castle

TG0224

(?) 1795

The Gatehouse, Saltwood Castle

TG0224a

(?) 1795

Saltwood Castle: The Gatehouse from a Farmyard

TG0301

Place depicted

Footnotes

  1. 1 The Leger Galleries Ltd, English Watercolours, London, 1968, no.40. The drawing was later with Thos. Agnew & Sons when it was wrongly attributed to Thomas Hearne (1744–1817).

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