Girtin generally made few changes to Moore’s compositions, in this case adding a simple figure group in the foreground and inventing a lively skyscape that is not present in the original sketch. Girtin did, however, correct Moore’s faulty perspective and succeeded in giving the ruined east end of the church a more monumental quality so that his watercolour more closely approximates the east end’s actual height than the amateur’s on-the-spot drawing. The cathedral at St Andrews was the largest in Scotland when it was dedicated in 1318 and it became the centre of the Catholic Church in Scotland. Following the Reformation, the cathedral was abandoned in 1561 in favour of the local parish church and the building was left to fall into the ruined state recorded by Moore in 1792. Moore made at least two other drawings of the cathedral on 30 August, from one of which (see figure 1) he commissioned Dayes to produce a view of the ruined east end from a different angle (see figure 2). It was this composition that was engraved for Robert Forsyth’s The Beauties of Scotland (Forsyth, 1805–8, vol.4, p.96).
About this Work
This watercolour by Girtin showing part of the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral on the Scottish coast, north of Edinburgh, was made after a drawing by the amateur artist and antiquarian James Moore (1762–99) (see the source image above), and he never visited the site himself. Girtin’s earliest patron made an extensive tour of the country in the late summer of 1792 and his sketch of the east end of the ruined building is dated 30 August. Girtin is documented as having worked for Moore between October 1792 and February 1793 for a fee of six shillings a day, producing watercolours on paper generally measuring roughly 6 ½ × 8 ½ in (16.5 × 21.5 cm), as here (Moore, Payments, 1792–93).1 The distinctive washline mount Girtin produced for the drawings has not survived in this case and the work has suffered some fading as well. In all Girtin painted seventy or so small watercolours after Moore’s sketches, including about thirty compositions derived from drawings made on the trip to Scotland. Moore employed other artists to work up his sketches for reproduction, including Girtin’s master, Edward Dayes (1763–1804), but it seems that the seventeen-year-old artist, who may still have been an apprentice at this date, was tasked with simply producing the best watercolours he could from the little more than functional records produced by the antiquarian. Moore’s collection of watercolours by Girtin, which eventually numbered over a hundred, remained in the ownership of his descendants until it was broken up after 1912.