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Works Thomas Girtin after James Moore

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

1792 - 1793

Primary Image: TG0146: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), after James Moore (1762–99), The Tithe Barn at Abbotsbury, with St Catherine's Chapel on the Hill, 1792–93, graphite, watercolour and pen and ink on wove paper, on an original mount, 10.6 × 15 cm, 4 ⅛ × 5 ⅞ in. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1975.4.429).

Photo courtesy of Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (Public Domain)

Artist's source: James Moore (1762–99), The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury, 5 July 1791, graphite and watercolour on laid paper, 16.5 × 21.3 cm, 6 ½ × 8 ⅜ in. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1975.3.628).

Photo courtesy of Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (Public Domain)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) after James Moore (1762-1799)
Title
  • The Tithe Barn at Abbotsbury, with St Catherine's Chapel on the Hill
Date
1792 - 1793
Medium and Support
Graphite, watercolour and pen and ink on wove paper, on an original mount
Dimensions
10.6 × 15 cm, 4 ⅛ × 5 ⅞ in
Mount Dimensions
12.2 × 16.8 cm, 4 ¾ × 6 ⅝ in
Inscription

'Abbotsbury / near Weymouth' on the back, by James Moore; 'founded about 1206 by Orcius or Orking, Steward to Kg Can[ute]' on the back, by James Moore; 'St. Catherines Chapel is on the hill in the / distance' on the back, by James Moore

Object Type
Work after an Amateur Artist
Subject Terms
Monastic Ruins; Picturesque Vernacular; The West Country: Devon and Dorset

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0146
Description Source(s)
Viewed in 2001

Provenance

James Moore (1762–99); his widow, Mary Moore (née Howett) (d.1835); bequeathed to Anne Miller (1802–90); bequeathed to Edward Mansel Miller (1829–1912); bequeathed to Helen Louisa Miller (1842–1915); bought by an unknown purchaser, 1912, £15 15s; ... Mrs E. S. Redford; Mrs Christopher; Thos. Agnew & Sons, 1956 (stock no.7958); Thos. Agnew & Sons, 1962, £220; bought from them by Paul Mellon (1907–99), 1963; presented to the Center, 1975

Exhibition History

Agnew’s, 1956, no.14 as ’Abbotsbury near Weymouth’; New Haven, 1986a, no.26

Bibliography

Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.207 as 'Untraced ... "Abbotsbury, near Weymouth"'

About this Work

This view by Girtin of the medieval barn at Abbotsbury was made after a drawing by the amateur artist and antiquarian James Moore (1762–99), and Girtin did not visit the site himself until 1797. Girtin’s earliest patron visited Dorset in 1791 and he inscribed the sketch he made at Abbotsbury with the date, ‘July 5th’ (see the source image above). Girtin is documented as having worked for Moore between October 1792 and February 1793 for a fee of six shillings a day, producing small watercolours on paper generally measuring roughly 6 ½ × 8 ½ in (16.5 × 21.5 cm) (Moore, Payments, 1792–93).1 This drawing is smaller than the seventy or so works that were initially produced for Moore and, given the fact that there is much greater attention to the figures than seen in the bulk of the watercolours of ancient castles and monastic remains he created for his patron, it may date from slightly later. In a picturesque genre scene that pays less attention to the ostensible antiquarian subject than was typically the case with Moore’s commissions, the viewer’s attention is caught by a circle of farmhands and animals, with cattle feeding, pigs playing and horses drinking, whilst in the distance a farmer admonishes a recalcitrant mule. The magnificent tithe barn of around 1400, at eighty-three metres (273 ft) in length one of the largest in the country, sadly lacks any sense of monumentality and is noticeably run down, whilst the architecturally significant St Catherine’s Chapel, on the hill to the right (also c.1400), is barely discernible at such a distance, all of which was no doubt down to Moore’s deficiencies as an artist. It is perhaps indicative of the artist’s interest in the site’s picturesque possibilities that when Girtin himself visited Abbotsbury in the autumn of 1797, he made two colour sketches of the barn from close to (TG1244 and TG1246). These strip away the last vestiges of the antiquarian subject recorded by Moore and paved the way for watercolours such as the sadly faded The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury (TG1245), which could nonetheless convey more of the monument’s pictorial potential (TG1245).

(?) 1797

The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1244

1797 - 1798

The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1246

1797 - 1798

The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1245

1797 - 1798

The Tithe Barn, Abbotsbury

TG1245

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

Footnotes

  1. 1 The document detailing the payments made to the young Girtin by Moore is transcribed in full in the Documents section of the Archive (1792–93 – Item 1).

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