- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton's Paradise Lost
- Date
- (?) 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 30.8 × 25.1 cm, 12 ⅛ × 9 ⅞ in
- Inscription
‘Betwixt these rocky Pillars Gabriel Sate / Chief of the Angelic Guard awaiting night’ on an old mount, now detached
- Object Type
- Sketching Society Drawing
- Subject Terms
- Literary Subject
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1505
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001
Provenance
John Gere (1921–95); P & D Colnaghi & Co., 1966; bought from them by Paul Mellon (1907–99); presented to the Center, 1975
Exhibition History
New Haven, 1986a, no.72
Bibliography
Morris, 1986, p.20
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
Revisions & Feedback
The website will be updated from time to time and, when changes are made, a PDF of the previous version of each page will be archived here for consultation and citation.
Please help us to improve this catalogue
If you have information, a correction or any other suggestions to improve this catalogue, please contact us.
About this Work
This monochrome study, which illustrates a scene from John Milton’s (1608–74) Paradise Lost (book 4, lines 549–50), was almost certainly produced by Girtin at a meeting of the Sketching Society in 1799. In the first phase of the society’s existence, before its rules were codified and the passages that were selected for illustration were carefully inscribed in the Minute Book, the aims of ‘the Brothers’ were singularly ambitious. According to an inscription on the back of a drawing by François Louis Thomas Francia (1772–1839), the members, who also included the amateurs Thomas Richard Underwood (1772–1836), John Charles Denham (1777–1867) and Thomas George Worthington (unknown dates), and young professionals of Girtin’s generation, Paul Sandby Munn (1773–1845) and George Samuel (active 1785–1823), ‘met for the purpose of establishing by practice a school of Historic Landscape, the subjects being designs from poetick passages’ (Smith, 2002b, p.131). And who better as a model for watercolourists aspiring to create a ‘school of Historic Landscape’ than Milton, the author of the great English biblical epic and so very different from the descriptive poets chosen for later meetings, where passages ‘tending to Landscape’ posed less of a challenge to the members (TG1501)?
As if to illustrate the lofty original aims of the ‘Brothers’, Girtin turned to the contemporary artist who aspired to the highest ideals of history painting, James Barry (1741–1806), and to one of the six enormous canvasses he painted for the walls of the Society of Arts in London, which illustrated The Progress of Human Culture, as he titled the sequence. Thus, in what is Girtin’s only serious essay in the grand manner, albeit on a small scale and the product of just three hours’ labour in the studio of a fellow artist, the watercolourist depicted the archangel Gabriel waiting for night in a pose that was clearly derived from the guardian angel in the final scene of the Progress, Elysium and Tararus (see figure 1) – though it was presumably the print, published in 1791, that the artist created his variant. As befits an artist who had not undergone rigorous training in figure drawing in the Royal Academy schools, the anatomy of the figure leaves something to be desired. Additionally, Girtin’s response to the lines
Betwixt these rocky pillars Gabriel sat,
Chief of the angelic guards, awaiting night
is disappointingly literal as Girtin depicts the sun setting between rocky pillars with an owl swooping above. Not surprisingly, no echoes of this more ambitious phase of the Sketching Society’s activities reappear in Girtin’s later landscapes, and the other sketches he produced from poetic sources are not noticeably different from his standard topographical scenes.
1799
The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper’s ‘The Task’
TG1501