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Works Thomas Girtin and Joseph Mallord William Turner after (?) Edward Dayes

The River Leven, Cumbria, Viewed from Penny Bridge

1794 - 1797

Primary Image: TG0773: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), after (?) Edward Dayes (1763–1804), The River Leven, Cumbria, Viewed from Penny Bridge, 1794–97, graphite and watercolour on wove paper (watermark: J WHATMAN), 17 × 23 cm, 6 ¹¹⁄₁₆ × 9 ⅛ in. Tate, Turner Bequest CCCLXXIX, 4 (D36628).

Photo courtesy of Tate (All Rights Reserved)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) after (?) Edward Dayes (1763-1804)
Title
  • The River Leven, Cumbria, Viewed from Penny Bridge
Date
1794 - 1797
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper (watermark: J WHATMAN)
Dimensions
17 × 23 cm, 6 ¹¹⁄₁₆ × 9 ⅛ in
Inscription

‘from Penny bridge Lancashire’ on the back, by Thomas Girtin

Object Type
Collaborations; Monro School Copy
Subject Terms
The Lake District

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0773
Description Source(s)
Viewed in January 2018

Provenance

Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833); his posthumous sale, Christie's, 26–28 June and 1–2 July 1833 (day and lot number not known); bought by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851); accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest, 1856

Exhibition History

National Gallery, London, on display up to 1904, no.735

Bibliography

Ruskin, Works, vol.13, p.640 as 'A Winding River'; Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1242 as 'A winding river' by Thomas Girtin; Turner Online as 'View along the Valley of a River towards Distant Hills' by Joseph Mallord William Turner and Thomas Girtin (Accessed 09/09/2022)

About this Work

This view of the river Leven, seen from the village of Penny Bridge in the Lake District, was made at the home Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833) and was bought at his posthumous sale by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). It was here that Turner and his almost exact contemporary, Girtin, were employed across three winters, probably between 1794 and 1797, to copy ‘the outlines or unfinished drawings of’ principally John Robert Cozens (1752–97), but other artists too, including Girtin’s master, Edward Dayes (1763–1804). As they recalled to the diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821), the ‘finished drawings’ were the result of a strict division of labour: ‘Girtin drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. The young artists reported that ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’, with Turner receiving ‘3s. 6d each night’ whilst ‘Girtin did not say what He had’ (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).1 The outcome of their joint labours was substantial, amounting to several hundred drawings of which at least twenty are Lake District scenes after compositions by Dayes.

Girtin made a number of copies of his master’s views of the Lake District during his apprenticeship, including Lake Windermere and Belle Isle (TG0078). Since he was never actually to travel to one of the country’s most popular picturesque regions, for artists as well as their patrons and customers, he continued to base his Lake District views on the works of others throughout his career. As with the numerous copies that Girtin and Turner created from compositions by Cozens, it was the slight sketches and outlines that Dayes made on his travels that were used as the source for their more finished watercolours. Monro’s posthumous sale, in 1833, contained several hundred of Dayes’ sketches, including seven ‘Views on the lakes, blue and Indian ink’ as well as views of ‘Keswick, Glanton, Patterdale’, all presumably made on his only documented visit to the Lakes in 1789, but there is no evidence that Monro owned any of the older artist’s studio works (Exhibitions: Christie’s, 2 July 1833, lots 42 and 45). Typically, the precise Dayes source of this view, looking east along the meandering course of the river Leven, has not been traced, though this does not mean we should look elsewhere for its model. Few of Dayes’ sketches have survived and, arguably, the fact that no source can be found suggests that it was a thoroughly unprepossessing drawing that required considerable transformational skills from the young artists.

This is one of several hundred works bought by Turner at Monro’s posthumous sale in 1833, the majority of which were attributed to him alone. The cataloguer of the Turner Bequest, Alexander Finberg, in contrast thought that Girtin was responsible for watercolours such as this, whilst more recently Andrew Wilton has established their joint authorship (Finberg, 1909, vol.2, p.1242; Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23). Unlike Girtin, Turner did visit the region, albeit briefly in 1797. However, whilst some of the items in the sale may have resulted from this trip, the majority were noted as being in ‘blue and Indian ink’ and therefore employed the same palette associated with the Monro School works. In this case, although the colour washes by Turner have been applied more densely than was generally the case, just enough of Girtin’s distinctive pencil work is still visible to be sure of his involvement in the work’s production. However, this amounted to probably not much more than tracing the outlines from a simple drawing; it was Turner’s more onerous task to obscure the essentially mechanical practice of replication and produce something that approximates to a finished work.

1791 - 1792

Lake Windermere and Belle Isle

TG0078

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

Footnotes

  1. 1 The full diary entry, giving crucial details of the artists’ work at Monro’s house, is transcribed in the Documents section of the Archive (1798 – Item 2).

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