The number of Girtin’s figure studies is small, amounting to no more than half a dozen examples, including a self-portrait at work (TG1533); three informal drawings of women, perhaps family members (TG0917, TG1514 and TG1515); and two sketches of male agricultural workers (TG1500 and TG1339 (reverse)). None are signed and given that they display a range of styles the attribution of each to Girtin comes with varying degrees of certainty. This hitherto unpublished study of a sailor on board a ship is likewise unsigned and its attribution to Girtin on stylistic grounds therefore poses a similar challenge. However, I believe that there are sufficient links with the two figure studies which are most likely to be autograph drawings by Girtin – a female study on the back of a signed letter (TG0917) and a sketch of a country boy on the reverse of an on-the-spot drawing of Valle Crucis in North Wales (TG1339) – to suggest that this is indeed a relatively early autograph drawing by an artist who had no formal academic training. Certainly, the drawing displays none of the recourse to convention and formula that might be expected from a student at the Royal Academy who would begin their laborious and extended period of study by drawing from the antique before honing his skills by working from life. As with the study of a peasant boy (TG1339), there is no sense here of an anatomically correct body beneath the formless costume and every line seems to have been invented anew as the artist tries out various touches and marks with varying degrees of success. Moreover, as with the portrait of the boy, shading and modelling is at a minimum and all depends on the descriptive power of the outline and its varying strengths and points of emphasis. The drawing also shares an attractive economy of means in the face with the female study (TG0917) as well as lumpish hands which are more suited to a sailor than a woman reading in a domestic setting. Indeed, the rough-and-ready nature of the draughtsmanship is quite in keeping with the subject: a working man sketched for possible use in a naval scene. The variety of the marks made is also not untypical of Girtin’s approach to the depiction of architecture and together with the image of the ship on the reverse – a ‘cod smack’ – it suggests an engagement with a naval subject that was altogether closer than frankly formulaic studies such as Five Vessels on a Calm Sea (TG1808). The inscription on the reverse of the sheet is also significant in another respect for as James Cooper has pointed out (email dated 21 August 2024) the idiosyncratic form of the capital ‘C’ and the distinctive character of the ‘d’ recur on a number of Girtin’s drawings including the sketch of John Raphael Smith (TG1600) and most significantly in an autograph letter to Dr Thomas Monro (TG0917 reverse). Any lingering doubts that I may have had about the attribution of the drawings to Girtin have consequently been banished.

Girtin’s engagement with naval subjects appears to have been limited to trips to the coast of Northumberland in 1796 and to the West Country in 1797. The former was said to have included a trip on a collier in the company of the artist George Morland (1763–1804) and according to Girtin’s early biographers, repeating family tradition, ‘they performed their passage by sea … in order to observe character and sketch the sailors’ (Roget, 1891, vol.1, p.115). The voyage is otherwise undocumented and I am inclined to believe that this drawing or its like was the original source of the anecdote rather than being evidence of a concerted study of seafaring figures undertaken in the company of Morland. Certainly, Girtin did not make use of this sketch in the shipping and coastal scenes that he made sporadically during his short career where the figures included in a view such as The Harbour at Weymouth (TG0911) are without exception smaller in scale and much more generalised.

1797 - 1798

Self-Portrait of the Artist at Work

TG1533

1795 - 1796

A Study of a Woman Sewing

TG0917

1794 - 1795

A Study of a Girl Reading

TG1514

1794 - 1795

A Study of a Young Girl

TG1515

1798 - 1799

Studies of a Country Boy

TG1500

(?) 1798

Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures

TG1339

1795 - 1796

A Study of a Woman Sewing

TG0917

(?) 1798

Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures

TG1339

(?) 1798

Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures

TG1339

1795 - 1796

A Study of a Woman Sewing

TG0917

(?) 1800

Five Vessels on a Calm Sea

TG1808

1798 - 1799

John Raphael Smith: ‘Waiting for the Mail Coach’

TG1600

1795 - 1796

A Study of a Woman Sewing

TG0917

1796 - 1797

The Harbour at Weymouth

TG0911