- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
- Date
- (?) 1798
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 25 × 30.1 cm, 9 ⅞ × 11 ⅞ in
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Castle Ruins; The Midlands
-
- Collection
- Versions
-
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
(TG1366)
- Catalogue Number
- TG1365
- Description Source(s)
- Gallery Website
Provenance
Raymond Carter; his sale, Sotheby's, 24 February 1960, lot 48 as 'The Ruined Abbey, a sketch'; bought by P & D Colnaghi & Co., £380; bought from them by the Gallery, 1960
Exhibition History
Colnaghi’s, 1960, no.62, catalogue not traced; Kingston, 1964, no.10
Place depicted
Other entries in The 1798 Welsh Tour:
Sketches and Subsequent Watercolours
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Tate, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Private Collection, North Wales
Caernarfon: A Street Scene with Plas Mawr
Tate, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
British Museum, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
British Museum, London
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
A Bridge over the Glaslyn, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
Private Collection
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake), Looking towards Cadair Idris
Private Collection
A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
British Museum, London
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
British Museum, London
An Unidentified Landscape, Possibly the Vale of Clwyd
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Valle Crucis Abbey: From the Cloister Looking Towards the Dormitory
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey: The Chapter House, from the South West
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A River Scene, Probably the Dee near Corwen
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
The Cloisters of Chester Cathedral
Private Collection
The Red Castle, from Hawk Lake, with a Distant View of Shrewsbury
Private Collection
Wroxeter: The Roman Wall
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
The Old Severn Bridge at Bridgnorth
British Museum, London
Hereford Cathedral, from across the River Wye
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
An Unidentified Valley, Probably in North Wales
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Cadair Idris, from the Estuary near Barmouth
Private Collection
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About this Work
This fine on-the-spot colour sketch, depicting the late fourteenth-century Great Hall at Kenilworth Castle, was used as the basis for a large studio watercolour of the ruins (TG1366). At the time of making his sketch, Girtin had already depicted the Great Hall in two watercolours (TG0128 and TG0250). However, although Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak thought that the artist had visited Kenilworth on his 1794 tour of the Midland counties with his first significant patron, the amateur artist and antiquarian James Moore (1762–99), it now appears that these first views were actually copied from outline drawings made by Moore on his own 1789 visit. Finally visiting the Great Hall in person, Girtin would have been well aware of the significance of the structure, which was built for John of Gaunt (1340–99) between 1373 and 1380 on a truly royal scale, but presumably he felt that the sketches he had hitherto worked from were not satisfactory for his purposes as a mature artist who no longer concentrated on the antiquarian market. The actual date of Girtin’s visit to Kenilworth is not known for sure, though the most likely option is that he took in the castle either on the way to or travelling back from North Wales in the summer of 1798, when his route would have gone through the Midland counties of Warwickshire and Shropshire. This conclusion is backed up by comparisons with the on-the-spot colour sketches that the artist made on that trip, particularly the interior view The Great Hall, Conwy Castle (TG1305), which displays many of the same signs of a work done in haste. As with that work, therefore, the artist appears to have lost control of the very liquid washes of colour he employed, as he tried to capture the way that the red sandstone used in the construction of the castle had been energised by the sunlight. Likewise, the way that the rubble and vegetation that fill the ruined interior are rendered as an inchoate mass of colour resembles the Conwy view, where again there is no attempt to create a credible space, just a record of how a specific light effect plays on different surfaces.
All of this begs the question of whether Girtin went to the extra trouble of producing a sizeable colour sketch because he already had a commission ahead of his travels. This would certainly be a logical conclusion in this case, but the evidence, in general, is not overwhelming, since only half of the colour sketches he executed on the 1798 trip were actually realised as studio watercolours. I suspect, therefore, that Girtin departed from his usual practice of making a simple pencil drawing when two criteria were met: firstly, when he discovered a subject likely to attract an order, and secondly, when he encountered the composition in a suitable light or it was accompanied by a weather effect appropriate for a studio watercolour. The resulting colour sketches would then both help in the production of the finished watercolour and provide a useful guide to prospective clients, who would get a better idea of what their purchase might look like. The increase in the frequency of Girtin’s colour sketches was therefore not simply a function of an aesthetic agenda shaped by naturalism, as has been suggested by authors such as Girtin and Loshak, but was closely linked to issues of production and consumption (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.82–85).
1798 - 1799
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
TG1366
1792 - 1793
The Great Keep, Kenilworth Castle
TG0128
(?) 1795
Kenilworth Castle: The View from the South
TG0250
(?) 1798
The Great Hall, Conwy Castle
TG1305