- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
- Date
- 1795 - 1796
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and pen and ink on wove paper
- Dimensions
- 48.8 × 37.8 cm, 19 ¼ × 14 ⅞ in
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- City Life and Labour; London and Environs; Street Scene
Provenance
Edmund Dorrell (1778–1857), by 1851; then by descent to William Dorrell (lent to London, 1875; London, 1877); his sale, Christie’s, 15 April 1898, lot 62; bought by 'Palser', £5; J. Palser & Sons (stock no.14966); bought by Sir Walter Prideaux (1846–1928), 11 July 1898 (lent to London, 1920); then by descent to Walter Treverbian Prideaux (1875–1958); on loan to Southampton Art Gallery from 1980–97; Thos. Agnew & Sons, 1997; private collection, USA; Thos. Agnew & Sons, 2001; bought by the Museum, 2002
Exhibition History
London, 1875, no.133 as 'View of St. Paul's'; London, 1877, no.320; London, 1920, no.111; Agnew’s, 1931, no.126; Agnew’s, 1953a, no.41; on loan to Southampton City Art Gallery, 1980–97; Agnew’s, 2001, no.34; London, 2002, no.75; New York, 2003, no catalogue
Bibliography
Barker, 2003, p.27; Shanes, 2016a, pp.105–6; Morris, 2016, not paginated
Place depicted
Other entries in London and the Home Counties, Together with Miscellaneous Studies and Views

Windsor Castle, from the River Thames
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum

Great Bookham Church, from the East
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust)

The Gateway, St Albans Abbey
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
Private Collection

An Interior View of St Albans Abbey, from the Crossing
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

The Interior of St Albans Abbey
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery

Windsor Castle and the Great Park, from the South West
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Great Park: Herne’s Oak with a Herd of Deer
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Stags Fighting amongst a Herd of Deer in Windsor Great Park, with the Castle in the Distance
Private Collection

A Herd of Deer in Richmond Park
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section One: Somerset House to Blackfriars Bridge
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Two: The Surrey Bank
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Three: Westminster Bridge to York Stairs
Private Collection

Westminster, from the West Corner of the Adelphi Terrace
Private Collection

The Thames with St Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Shipping on the Thames, Looking down Limehouse Reach towards Greenwich, with the Church of St Alfege in the Distance
Private Collection

A Haystack on a Farm, on the Road to Harrow-on-the-Hill
Private Collection

A Panoramic Landscape, near Norwood
Private Collection

Westminster Abbey, Seen from Green Park and the Queen's Basin
National Gallery of Art, Washington

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Paul's Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Untraced Works

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

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A River Scene, with Boats
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

An Imaginary Coast Scene with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea
Private Collection

London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

Turver’s Farm, Radwinter
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Farm with an Unidentified Windmill
Private Collection

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Private Collection, Norfolk

Trees and Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone-next-Dartford
British Museum, London

A Farmhouse in a Woodland Setting, Said to Be in Devon
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Farm Buildings, Probably in Surrey
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester

Tintern Village, Seen across the Forge Pond, Formerly Known as ‘The Mill-Pond’
Private Collection

A Picturesque House Overlooking a River, with Distant Windmills
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington

The West End of an Unidentified Church
Private Collection

Effingham Churchyard, Formerly Known as 'A Country Churchyard'
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

An Unidentified Windmill, Probably in Lambeth
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston

Unidentified Buildings, Herne Hill
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

Study of a Sailor on Board a Ship; A Fishing Boat
Private Collection

The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper's The Task
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

An Unidentified Subject, Probably from James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian
Tate, London

The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Study of a Woman Reading; A Slight Study of a Seated Woman
Private Collection

Portrait Study of a Man, Said to Be the Artist George Barret the Younger
Private Collection

A Study of a Lion from the Tower of London
Private Collection

An Open Field with a Cart and Horses, Known as ‘The Carter’
British Museum, London

A Church Seen across Fields, with Another Sketch Depicting a Woman
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

A Landscape with Figures by Railings
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Self-Portrait of the Artist at Work
British Museum, London

An Unidentified Landscape, with a Church amongst Trees
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Cottage and a Windmill Surrounded by Trees
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from the Thames
Private Collection

The Head of a Youth, Here Identified as Joseph Mallord William Turner
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Old London Bridge, with the Shot Tower in Construction, and St Olave's Church
Private Collection
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About this Work
This appears to be the earliest of three finished watercolours that Girtin painted showing St Paul’s Cathedral from St Martin’s-le-Grand, the street where he spent his boyhood and where he was still living at the time of their production (the others being TG1394 and TG1395). Aside from its personal association, the view was clearly popular with his early patrons, and it appears to be the first case of where Girtin was called upon to make multiple versions of a subject to satisfy the demands of the market. The production of the watercolours coincided with the publication of a print after a painting by William Marlow (1740–1813), Ludgate Hill Looking towards the Grand West Front of St Paul’s Cathedral (see figure 1), and in many ways this version, in particular, can be seen as a response to that image. Thus, although both works follow the same basic composition, with its clear reference to the view paintings of Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto) (1697–1768), Girtin’s watercolour offers a noticeably different image of city life, as a laden wagon and carters with their heavy working horses replace the smart carriages of Ludgate Hill, whilst a range of working men and women here predominate, in contrast to the fashionably dressed figures who stroll along the altogether more ordered pavements in Marlow’s scene. St Martin’s-le-Grand was the route favoured by the heavier trading vehicles going to and from the city’s markets, and, although the street was also the site of numerous glass-fronted shops, it gave way to an array of more humble businesses, amongst which were the premises of Girtin’s mother, ‘R. Girtin brushmaker’, at number forty-six (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.20). Rosehanna Girtin (née Townsend, unknown dates) had moved there with her three children at some point in the 1780s, after the death of her first husband, and it is hard not to see Girtin’s image of commercial vitality as a reflection of his own social milieu amongst London’s artisanal classes. Each of the three views of the street thus features a different set of figures and working animals, though they are united by a sense that they were improvised by an artist who had witnessed such scenes every day of his life and who was not therefore simply populating his topographical view with stock types.
The great care that Girtin took with his figures can also be seen in the unfinished version of the composition, which presumably predates this watercolour (TG1393) and which gives us valuable information about how the artist proceeded with the production of his studio works at this date. This is likely to have been around 1795–96, when, according to Turner’s early biographer, Walter Thornbury (1828–76), Girtin showed a version of the composition to Turner, who praised the effect, saying, ‘Girtin, no man living could do this but you’ (Thornbury, 1862, vol.2, p.36). This, Eric Shanes argued, was the inspiration for Turner’s vibrant street scene in his view of Wolverhampton shown at the Royal Academy in 1796 (Shanes, 2016a, pp.105–6). Turner’s similar image of the untidy vitality of a modern commercial centre tellingly does not feature his native London; in contrast, Girtin throughout his short career returned to depict the city with a strong sense of belonging that is nowhere better exemplified than in this composition.
On a technical note, the paper historian Peter Bower has identified the support used by Girtin as a white wove drawing paper made by the Balston and Hollingworth Brothers Partnership at Turkey Mill, Maidstone, Kent (Smith, 2002b, p.101; Bower, Report). This is the same paper that Girtin used for the later view The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral (TG1020), though it came from a different batch.
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
TG1393
(?) 1796
The West Front of Peterborough Cathedral
TG1020