For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.
Works Thomas Girtin

The Hamble River, near Southampton

1797 - 1798

 

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
Title
  • The Hamble River, near Southampton
Date
1797 - 1798
Medium and Support
Watercolour on paper
Dimensions
12.7 × 36.2 cm, 5 × 14 ¼ in
Object Type
Colour Sketch: Studio Work
Subject Terms
Hampshire View; River Scenery

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG1238
Girtin & Loshak Number
398 as '1800'
Description Source(s)
Girtin and Loshak, 1954

Provenance

Madeline Clifton (née Knox) (1890–1975); Thos. Agnew & Sons; bought by the Hon. Marion Evelyn Wood (née Ashton); given to Baroness Ashton of Hyde (née Marjorie Nell Brookes); with her in 1954

Exhibition History

Agnew’s, 1953a, no.95 as ’Near Southampton, previously known as Easby Abbey’

About this Work

This work has not been seen in public since an exhibition in 1953, and, because it does not seem to have been photographed, we are dependent on the description of Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak, who must have viewed it shortly prior to the publication of their catalogue (Exhibitions: Agnew’s, 1953a, no.95). They recorded that the panoramic composition encompassed a view of the river Hamble near Southampton that included the ‘estuary at low tide with channels and mud flats; low wooded hills beyond; some ships on the water’, and they dated it to around 1800 (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.189). It is clearly not possible to confirm the attribution of the work, though its subject (a view near Southampton) and the extreme extended proportions of the composition (almost three times as wide as high) both point to a Girtin work resulting from his West Country trip of 1797. Only the work known as An Unidentified Estuary (TG1293) exceeds the proportions recorded here, and that too appears to show a West Country scene. It would be particularly interesting to see the work again, not least to establish its relationship to another panoramic view on the river Hamble that is now attributed to François Louis Thomas Francia (1772–1839) (TG1238) but that sounds from Girtin and Loshak’s description as though it shows a similar scene.

1798 - 1799

An Unidentified Estuary, Probably in the West Country

TG1293

1797 - 1798

The Hamble River, near Southampton

TG1238

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

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.