This is one of two views of the Franciscan convent of Santa Lucia, near Caserta (the other being TG0744), and both are based on a composition by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) (see figure 1). Like the smaller watercolour, it appears to have been produced during a period when Girtin was employed, together with his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), at the home of their mutual patron Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833). Here they were paid to make ‘finished drawings’ from the ‘Copies’ of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings of Cozens’ and other artists and, as the two young artists later recalled, Girtin generally ‘drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’ (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).¹ In all they produced several hundred drawings after the sketches and outlines of Cozens, though this example does not fit into the general pattern of their work for Monro. Certainly, the watercolour is based on a sketch by Cozens, but uncharacteristically it is on a larger scale than the source, and Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak in their catalogue of the artist’s work suggest that it is by Girtin alone (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.204). The work is known to me only from a colour image, and I am not therefore in a position to comment at length on the attribution, other than to say that the suggestion of Girtin and Loshak seems more plausible than either of the other options – namely, that the work was by Turner alone or that it was produced as a collaboration, with Girtin providing the outline drawing and Turner adding the washes, as was almost certainly the case for the smaller version of the composition, which is at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

Whichever the case, the watercolour follows Cozens’ on-the-spot sketch very closely. The drawing, which is inscribed ‘Santa Lucia a Convent beyond Caserta – Novr.26’, is found in the fifth of the seven sketchbooks from the artist’s second Italian trip, which saw him travel to Naples in 1782 in the company of his patron William Beckford (1760–1844). It was made on a day’s excursion to Caserta that resulted in three sketches, all of which were ultimately realised as copies by the Monro School artists. It is unlikely that this watercolour was copied directly from the sketch by Cozens, however. It would have been uncharacteristic of Beckford to have lent the sketchbooks to Monro, and the existence of a large number of tracings of their contents by Cozens himself suggests that the patron, rather than the artist, retained the books. An album put together by Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827), now in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, includes more than seventy tracings from on-the-spot drawings in the first three of the sketchbooks, and these provided the basis for at least thirty Monro School works. There are only five tracings from the next three books, but there is no reason to think that others did not exist, and it was presumably from these lost copies by Cozens that as many as thirty-five more watercolours were produced, including this view of the convent. The fact that the Monro School copies never follow either the shading or the distribution of light seen in the on-the-spot sketches, though they always replicate the basic outlines, further suggests that Girtin and/or Turner worked from a tracing of the sketchbook view in this case too.

1794 - 1797

The Convent of Santa Lucia, near Caserta

TG0744