This outstanding colour sketch of the great tithe barn at Abbotsbury, the only significant survival of the Benedictine abbey, was almost certainly executed on Girtin’s West Country tour in the autumn of 1797. Girtin is documented as having been in Exeter in early November and it seems that his visit there, to sketch an interior view of the cathedral, was preceded by a journey along the Dorset coast that took in Weymouth and Lyme Regis, as well as Abbotsbury, where he produced another on-the-spot colour study of the early fifteenth-century tithe barn (TG1247) (Chancery, Income and Expenses, 1804).¹ The fact that Girtin coloured two views of the barn suggests that, unlike the other occasion when he made multiple on-the-spot sketches, in Weymouth (TG1240 and TG1241), he had a commission for a studio watercolour. There are in fact three works that are based on this study, two of them finished (TG1245 and TG1246) and one abandoned incomplete (TG1699). Certainly, that is the logical explanation for a visit to a site that Girtin had already depicted in a watercolour made for the antiquarian and amateur artist James Moore (1762–99) (TG0146), and it was his patron’s simple outline that had provided the basis for a scene that predated Girtin’s visit to Abbotsbury by five or so years (see the source image TG0146). On this occasion, Girtin adopted pretty much the same viewpoint, though the drawing concentrates more exclusively on the porch, and, with the aid of rapidly applied washes of colour, it records the weathered effect of the stone and the contrasting texture of the thatched roof, the details of which are noticeably less convincing in the earlier watercolour.

Girtin’s motive for producing such coloured sketches during his tour to the south west is clear, therefore, but there is also evidence that they came to fulfil a different function as a distinct commodity in their own right, and this is how I interpret the presence of the particularly ornate and prominent signature to the lower right of the drawing. In the opposite corner, the artist has inscribed the location of the scene, ‘Abbotsbury’, in pencil. That was Girtin’s normal practice for a sketch that he might need to refer to again in subsequent years, but the carefully executed signature only makes sense as a later addition that identifies the authorship of the sketch for a new or potential owner. I therefore suspect that what we have here is an on-the-spot colour sketch that Girtin made as an aid to the completion of a commission, but that he later found a buyer for it as an example of his much vaunted sketching skills. All of this begs the question, if the signature was inscribed later, could the colour also have been added subsequently to a simple outline drawing? This is, of course, perfectly possible, but there are a number of features that suggest that the work was indeed coloured on the spot and at some speed, not least the fact that the sheet displays clear signs that the artist was unable to control the application of his washes across areas of the thatched roof and the stonework. The use of a very limited palette of just four tones of two colours, worked wet in wet, with the artist not leaving the lighter areas to dry before applying darker highlights, again indicates that this drawing was worked with a degree of urgency in the field, and no doubt this was precisely what made it attractive to a collector who appreciated this aspect of Girtin’s working practice.

(?) 1797

Abbotsbury: The Tithe Barn, with a Pond

TG1247

(?) 1797

The Market Rooms, Weymouth

TG1240

(?) 1797

A Street in Weymouth

TG1241

1797 - 1798

The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1245

1797 - 1798

The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1246

1800 - 1801

A Distant View of Guisborough Priory; The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1699

1792 - 1793

The Tithe Barn at Abbotsbury, with St Catherine’s Chapel on the Hill

TG0146

1792 - 1793

The Tithe Barn at Abbotsbury, with St Catherine’s Chapel on the Hill

TG0146