- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- (?) Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- St Paul’s Cathedral, from the Thames
- Date
- 1796 - 1797
- Medium and Support
- Graphite on paper
- Dimensions
- 22.9 × 16.5 cm, 9 × 6 ½ in
- Object Type
- Outline Drawing
- Subject Terms
- London and Environs; London Architecture; The River Thames
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1863a
- Description Source(s)
- Exhibition Catalogue
Provenance
Sir Walter Henry Bromley Davenport (1903–89); his sale, Christie's, 16 June 1970, lot 122 as by Joseph Mallord William Turner; bought by Thos. Agnew & Sons, 140 gns; Ernest Heinzer, San Francisco (lent to Berkeley, 1975)
Exhibition History
Berkeley, 1975, no.6 as by Joseph Mallord William Turner
Bibliography
Hill, 1993, pp.14–15 as by Joseph Mallord William Turner
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 study of part of the southern flank of St Paul’s Cathedral, taken from the river Thames close to the northern end of Blackfriars Bridge, was attributed to Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) when it was last seen in public in 1975 (Exhibitions: Berkeley, 1975, no.6). Since then the drawing has been reattributed to Girtin by Andrew Wilton, and, according to a note in the Girtin Archive (12/3), this change was supported by Tom Girtin (1913–94), who added an image of the work to a manuscript copy of the catalogue of the artist’s works that his father, Thomas Girtin (1874–1960), created. From what I can see from a black and white photograph, this seems entirely reasonable. The range of touches, varying in strength and tone, combined with the frequent recourse to what amounts to a signature tick, whereby the artist pressed the graphite to leave a small darker point as a marker of his position on the sheet of paper, are seen in comparable architectural views by Girtin such as Caernarfon: A Street Scene with Plas Mawr (TG1313). This conclusion is backed up by the boldly truncated form of the boats in the foreground, which resemble another Thames view that uses the same device to involve the viewer in a view of St Paul’s (TG1386).
David Hill, however, returned the attribution of the drawing to Turner in his book Turner on the Thames, making much of the effective way in which the author of the work ignored the wide sweep of the river at this point, opting instead to show a narrow angle that includes just the western part of St Paul’s within an upright format. As Hill notes, this has the effect of emphasising the sheer bulk of the cathedral with an ‘arresting immediacy of engagement’, something that can be easily lost when depicting the full length of the building from the south (Hill, 1993, pp.14–15). Although Hill’s point is well made and he includes other examples of Thames views by Turner that employ a vertical composition to show familiar scenes from a different angle, I still favour an attribution to Girtin on stylistic grounds. Moreover, the way that the view of St Paul’s is radically cropped to create a different perspective on the building, combined with the intrusive foreground, which places the viewer at river level with the artist, can equally be associated with Girtin at this date, around 1796–97.
(?) 1798
Caernarfon: A Street Scene with Plas Mawr (The Great House)
TG1313
1796 - 1797
The Thames, with St Paul’s and Blackfriars Bridge
TG1386