This view of the waterfront settlement of Shaldon in Devon was taken from the adjacent village of Teignmouth looking across the river Teign. Girtin visited Teignmouth in the autumn of 1797 when, as part of his West Country tour, he followed the south Devon coast from Exmouth. The artist made a rapid sketch of the beach at Teignmouth (TG1457), and he would only have had to move a few yards away to execute the drawing that presumably formed the basis for this watercolour. Girtin’s watercolour of Teignmouth has not been traced, but, if it does in fact follow the sketch, it would make an interesting contrast with the Shaldon view. The old port of Teignmouth was at the time of Girtin’s visit undergoing a transformation, with the building of an esplanade and seafront accommodation confirming its status as an increasingly fashionable resort, all of which is clearly apparent in the pencil sketch. Shaldon, which was only reachable by a ferry, was untouched by these developments. Therefore, whilst the Teignmouth view includes a line of bathing machines, here the beach is the site of boat-building, and the various carts and their attendant figures are engaged in trades associated with a traditional maritime economy.

The figures on the beach may only be very sketchily worked in, but the care that the artist took to differentiate their activities from what is seen in the equivalent Teignmouth scene suggests that the watercolour was produced in the studio from a pencil sketch, rather than being coloured on the spot. In what is a very marginal call, the fact that the work has lost much of its impact due to fading is another reason for thinking that the economy of the washes employed by the artist is more apparent than real; the water, for instance, has lost all but a few areas of blue reflections, and the sky has disappeared completely. In fact, as a note in the Girtin family archive records, this is quite literally the case, since such was the damaged state of the sky that Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) undertook some amateur conservation work on the watercolour when it was in his possession. He cut around the line of the hill and then mounted the remaining part of the landscape, minus the original sky, on another piece of paper. Tom Girtin (1913–94) called it an ‘ingenious collage’ and thought that ‘the result is almost undetectable’, though that is little consolation, knowing that evidence that might have confirmed its status as a studio work has been lost (Girtin Archive, 40A). Bright open skies are an attractive feature of the coastal views that stemmed from Girtin’s 1797 tour (such as in TG1267), and I suspect that the lost example here would have set a similar jaunty tone for the watercolour as a whole, before fading robbed it of its best qualities.

(?) 1797

The Beach at Teignmouth

TG1457

1798 - 1799

Kingswear, from Dartmouth

TG1267