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 Esq^r 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