In addition to this incomplete work, Girtin produced three finished studio watercolours of his view of St Paul’s Cathedral seen from St Martin’s-le-Grand, the street where he spent his boyhood and where he was living at the time of their production (TG1394, TG1395 and TG1396). Aside from its personal association, the view was clearly popular with his early patrons, and this appears to have been the first case where Girtin was called upon to make multiple versions of a subject to satisfy the market. The combination of a lively street scene and an imposing image of one of the city’s most important historical monuments, with more than a nod to the view paintings of Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto) (1697–1768) and his English followers (see TG1396 figure 1), transcended the personal associations of a scene that the artist literally found on his doorstep.

It is not clear why Girtin abandoned this watercolour at such an early stage in its production. Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak thought that the artist was unhappy with its ‘faulty perspective’, but overlaying an image of the drawing with the earliest of the finished watercolours (TG1396) shows that he made no significant changes to the composition, and it may be that it was actually worked up to try out the balance of light and shade, and is not therefore unfinished (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.149). Certainly, the existence of a pencil sketch, noted in the Girtin Archive (40A) but not traced, suggests that it was not sketched on the spot. Whatever the case, the work still provides an invaluable insight into how Girtin produced a finished studio work in the middle years of his career, beginning with an outline drawing in graphite to establish the form of the buildings and to reserve space for the carts and figures. Using the pencil lines as a guide, Girtin then added extensive areas of grey, corresponding to the shadows he planned for the completed work, as well as washing in other parts in a darker tint for the windows. The drawing, as it stands, represents perhaps a day’s work, and the most laborious parts of its production were left undone. The next stage would have seen the artist working across the drawing with a series of washes, progressing from light to dark, in order to build up the complex play of light on masonry; here Girtin would have used two or three layers of perhaps a dozen different tints. The artist typically left the figures until near the end of a drawing’s production, and he would then have concluded his work by adding small accents of local colour and by emphasising selected details with pen and ink. It is impossible to be precise about how long a watercolour of this size would have taken to be completed, but, since the artist would have had to leave a wash to dry before painting over it, its execution might have stretched over a week, and he almost certainly therefore worked on more than one at a time.

The condition of the drawing, with its creased and damaged surface full of stains, combined with the fact that it came from the collection of the artist’s son, Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74), suggests that it remained in Girtin’s studio throughout his career and that he may have referred to it when producing later versions of the composition.

Image Overlay

1795 - 1796

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand

TG1394

1796 - 1797

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand

TG1395

1795 - 1796

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand

TG1396

1795 - 1796

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand

TG1396