The watermill at Charenton on the river Marne east of Paris, shown in this watercolour, is also the subject of one of the pencil drawings that Girtin made on the spot for his set of aquatints, Picturesque Views in Paris (TG1890). This is therefore the only example of Girtin returning to the sketches he made in France for the subject of a studio watercolour, and it is, in consequence, just one of a handful of works that can definitively be said to date from the artist’s last year. The watercolour follows the pencil drawing closely, reproducing details such as the boat on the river and the carriage to the right. Otherwise, the work seems to have been made independently of the print, and there is no question of it being produced as a guide for the aquatint artists, as was the case with the hand-coloured impression of the etching that Girtin also produced (TG1890a). The watercolour is thus larger, and the skyscape and the reflections in the water are quite different from those in either the colour study or the finished aquatint. Indeed, were it not for the title on the print, engraved by the artist’s brother, John Girtin (1773–1821) – ‘THE WATER MILL above the Bridge AT CHARENTON’ – there would be little or nothing in the watercolour to suggest that the scene is French. In general, Girtin was singularly unimpressed with the French countryside as a subject for watercolours, concurring with Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809), his guide on a series of excursions around the environs of Paris, that the nation’s landscape was ‘spotty, naked, having no hedges and trees … with few grand masses, ragged broken lines, little verdure, and a prevailing grey tone’ (Holcroft, 1804, vol.2, p.492).¹ Charenton was different, however, and, given that ‘the views round it are many of them excellent, for the landscape painter: water, foliage, buildings, and mills’, Girtin set about ‘delineating’ one of the last of these (Holcroft, 1804, vol.2, p.490). The point about this scene, therefore, is that it made for a good subject in Girtin’s eyes, precisely because it resembled an English scene.

The work is of particular interest because of its extremely good condition, with the colours showing up brightly, almost jarringly so. It is impossible to say, however, whether this marked a change in Girtin’s practice following his trip to Paris, with the artist employing a more stable palette of colours that might withstand a reasonable exposure to light. Girtin’s last months after his return from France were dominated by the production of the Paris prints and by preparations for the display of his London panorama, and painting watercolours was a peripheral activity at this date, so there is no way of knowing whether the change in palette was anything more than a short-term reversion to an earlier way of working.