- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) after Margaretta Elizabeth Perceval (née Wilson), Lady Arden (1768-1851)
- Title
-
- The Thames with St Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge
- Date
- 1796 - 1797
- Medium and Support
- Graphite on wove paper
- Dimensions
- 13 × 18.4 cm, 5 ⅛ × 7 ¼ in
- Object Type
- Outline Drawing; Work after an Amateur Artist
- Subject Terms
- London and Environs; The River Thames
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1386
- Description Source(s)
- Museum Website
Provenance
Albany Gallery, London; Charles Ryskamp (1928–2010); presented to the Library, 1994, in memory of Dr Edith Porada
Exhibition History
Brussels, 1994, no.47 as ’The Thames, Blackfriars Bridge and St. Paul’s from the Adelphi’; New York, 1998, no.76; New Haven, 2010, no.51
Bibliography
Hargraves, 2010, pp.68–69; Smith, 2018, pp.32–33; Museum Website as 'The Thames, Blackfriars Bridge and St. Paul's from the Adelphi' (Accessed 16/09/2022)
Place depicted
Other entries in London and the Home Counties, Together with Miscellaneous Studies and Views

Windsor Castle, from the River Thames
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum

Great Bookham Church, from the East
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust)

The Gateway, St Albans Abbey
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
Private Collection

An Interior View of St Albans Abbey, from the Crossing
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

The Interior of St Albans Abbey
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery

Windsor Castle and the Great Park, from the South West
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Great Park: Herne’s Oak with a Herd of Deer
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Stags Fighting amongst a Herd of Deer in Windsor Great Park, with the Castle in the Distance
Private Collection

A Herd of Deer in Richmond Park
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section One: Somerset House to Blackfriars Bridge
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Two: The Surrey Bank
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Three: Westminster Bridge to York Stairs
Private Collection

Westminster, from the West Corner of the Adelphi Terrace
Private Collection

The Thames with St Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Shipping on the Thames, Looking down Limehouse Reach towards Greenwich, with the Church of St Alfege in the Distance
Private Collection

A Haystack on a Farm, on the Road to Harrow-on-the-Hill
Private Collection

A Panoramic Landscape, near Norwood
Private Collection

Westminster Abbey, Seen from Green Park and the Queen's Basin
National Gallery of Art, Washington

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Paul's Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Untraced Works

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A River Scene, with Boats
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

An Imaginary Coast Scene with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea
Private Collection

London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

Turver’s Farm, Radwinter
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Farm with an Unidentified Windmill
Private Collection

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Private Collection, Norfolk

Trees and Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone-next-Dartford
British Museum, London

A Farmhouse in a Woodland Setting, Said to Be in Devon
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Farm Buildings, Probably in Surrey
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester

Tintern Village, Seen across the Forge Pond, Formerly Known as ‘The Mill-Pond’
Private Collection

A Picturesque House Overlooking a River, with Distant Windmills
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington

The West End of an Unidentified Church
Private Collection

Effingham Churchyard, Formerly Known as 'A Country Churchyard'
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

An Unidentified Windmill, Probably in Lambeth
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston

Unidentified Buildings, Herne Hill
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

Study of a Sailor on Board a Ship; A Fishing Boat
Private Collection

The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper's The Task
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

An Unidentified Subject, Probably from James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian
Tate, London

The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Study of a Woman Reading; A Slight Study of a Seated Woman
Private Collection

Portrait Study of a Man, Said to Be the Artist George Barret the Younger
Private Collection

A Study of a Lion from the Tower of London
Private Collection

An Open Field with a Cart and Horses, Known as ‘The Carter’
British Museum, London

A Church Seen across Fields, with Another Sketch Depicting a Woman
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

A Landscape with Figures by Railings
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Self-Portrait of the Artist at Work
British Museum, London

An Unidentified Landscape, with a Church amongst Trees
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Cottage and a Windmill Surrounded by Trees
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from the Thames
Private Collection

The Head of a Youth, Here Identified as Joseph Mallord William Turner
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Old London Bridge, with the Shot Tower in Construction, and St Olave's Church
Private Collection
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About this Work
Girtin’s view of the same stretch of the Thames seen in the first segment of the 180-degree panoramic drawing made from a window at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833) (TG1378) was until recently also said to have been taken from the Adelphi. However, the view was actually executed from further upriver, as confirmed by the discovery of a strikingly similar scene in etching and aquatint after the work of the amateur artist Margaretta Elizabeth Perceval (née Wilson), Lady Arden (1768–1851), that is inscribed ‘from the House of M. A. Taylor Esqr Whitehall’ (see figure 1) (Smith, 2018, pp.32–33). An earlier writer also thought that the ‘drawing may be connected to Girtin’s Eidometropolis’ (Exhibitions: Brussels, 1994, no.47), the monumental 360-degree panorama that showed the river from the South Bank, but another recent discovery made during the preparation of this online catalogue, an engraving by John Greig (c.1779–1861 or later) (see the print after, above) from 1804 that actually reproduces Girtin’s drawing, suggests a more prosaic alternative: namely, that the pencil drawing was made for the print trade. Simply titled London, this second print repeats this Girtin drawing (now at the Morgan Library) rather than the panoramic format of the slightly earlier aquatint, and it too is dominated by the boldly cut-off view of shipping in the foreground. The fact that the link between the print and Girtin’s drawing has only just been made is not surprising, however, since the print is inscribed ‘from a Drawing by the Rt. Hon.ble Lady Arden’, with no reference to the professional artist’s involvement.
The superior quality of the draughtsmanship displayed in the pencil drawing, typical of Girtin’s work around 1796–97, means that we can discount the possibility that the work was produced by Lady Arden, and the most likely scenario is that Girtin was employed by a publisher to work up the amateur’s on-the-spot sketch into something more polished for engraving. It seems that Girtin therefore took Lady Arden’s untraced sketch as his point of departure, copied the general disposition of the distant buildings and then converted the panoramic composition into a more traditional landscape format by increasing the amount of visible sky and adding a lively framing device of shipping in the foreground, with a Thames barge lowering its mast to the right introducing a suitably picturesque accompaniment. The bold handling of the barge is in stark contrast to the prosaic pencil work in the distance, pointing up that this was little more than hack work for Girtin, and something that, as far as the publisher was concerned, did not merit the inclusion of the professional artist’s name. The plates used to embellish the Select Views of London and Its Environs, published by Greig together with James Storer (1771–1853), were modest in scale, and the fact that this example was published under Arden’s name is indicative of the audience the publication was aimed at: well-off amateurs who were primarily interested in the artistic contributions of members of their own class (Storer and Greig, 1804–5).
(?) 1796
A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section One: Somerset House to Blackfriars Bridge
TG1378