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Works Thomas Girtin

The West Front of Crowland Abbey

1793 - 1794

Primary Image: TG0286: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), The West Front of Crowland Abbey, 1793–94, graphite and watercolour on wove paper, 33.1 × 29.8 cm, 13 × 11 ¾ in. Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (WA1934.126.1).

Photo courtesy of Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (All Rights Reserved)

Print after: Bartholomew Howlett (1767–1827), after a work 'Drawn by T. Girtin from a Sketch by Ja.s Moore, Esq.r, F.S.A.' (James Moore (1762–99)), etching and engraving, 'Croyland Abbey' for A Selection of Views in the County of Lincoln, 22 August 1797, 29 × 23.7 cm, 11 ⅜ × 9 ⁵⁄₁₆ in. British Museum, London (1872,1012.4821).

Photo courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
Title
  • The West Front of Crowland Abbey
Date
1793 - 1794
Medium and Support
Graphite and watercolour on wove paper
Dimensions
33.1 × 29.8 cm, 13 × 11 ¾ in
Inscription

‘Girtin’ lower left, by Thomas Girtin

Object Type
Studio Watercolour
Subject Terms
Lincolnshire; Monastic Ruins

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0286
Girtin & Loshak Number
52 as 'Crowland Abbey, Lincolnshire'; '1793'
Description Source(s)
Viewed in 2001 and 2016

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 Francis Pierrepont Barnard (1854–1931), 1912, £40; his widow, Isabella Barnard; bequeathed to the Museum, 1934

Exhibition History

London, 1875, no.47; Manchester, 1975, no.3; Baltimore, 1979, no.40; Oxford, 1992, no.100; Lincoln, 1997, no.29; Oxford, 2015, no.27

Bibliography

Mayne, 1949, p.99; Brown, 1982, p.324, no.708

About this Work

This watercolour showing the west front of Crowland Abbey in Lincolnshire was engraved in 1797 by Bartholomew Howlett (1767–1827) and was one of ten subjects by Girtin that were included in A Selection of Views in the County of Lincoln (see the print after, above) (Howlett, 1805). Girtin visited the area in the summer of 1794 when he accompanied his earliest patron, the antiquarian and amateur artist James Moore (1762–99), on a sketching tour of some of the most outstanding Gothic churches and cathedrals in the Midland counties. Two of the views engraved by Howlett were made from drawings that Girtin produced for Moore following this trip (TG1008 and TG1010), but the majority of his contributions to the publication were copied after the work of other artists, including, as the credit line to the print notes, ‘a Sketch by Jas. Moore, Esqr., F. S. A.’. Although the print differs in some details from the watercolour, including the addition of a female figure and a cow as well as the reduction of the wall to the left so that it does not interrupt the view of the west doorway, the engraving was almost certainly based on Girtin’s work rather than a ‘Sketch’ by Moore. The credit line is not entirely inaccurate, however, since Girtin’s watercolour is indeed based on an on-the-spot sketch by Moore that dates from his earlier visit to Lincolnshire in 1789 (TG0286a), albeit one that was probably reworked by the professional artist in preparation for the Moore commission. On stylistic grounds, this is likely to have occurred around 1793–94, and the watercolour therefore probably predates Girtin’s first significant trip out of London. It seems that Howlett approached Moore for help with his publication and that the patron, sometime around 1796, lent this earlier view of Crowland together with the two Lincoln views that he had commissioned from Girtin after the 1794 tour (TG1008 and TG1010). At this stage, therefore, there may have been no direct connection between the artist and the publisher, and the view of Crowland was certainly not produced specifically for engraving.

Moore first travelled through Lincolnshire on the way to Yorkshire in the autumn of 1789. A visit to Crowland would have required a short detour from his route, but the antiquarian would have been well rewarded for his efforts by the abbey’s picturesque ruins. Just as John Sell Cotman (1782–1842) was to do a few years later, Moore chose a viewpoint close to the ruined south aisle of the west front of the abbey from where the banks of arcading, with their fine display of medieval statuary, are seen to good effect. The viewpoint was also well calculated to show off the generous proportions of the tower and spire, which were added to the west end of the north aisle in the later fifteenth century to provide accommodation for parishioners within the abbey, and which were left standing complete after the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

1794

Lincoln Cathedral, from the West

TG1008

1794 - 1795

Lincoln, from the Brayford Pool

TG1010

(?) 1789

The West Front of Crowland Abbey

TG0286a

1794

Lincoln Cathedral, from the West

TG1008

1794 - 1795

Lincoln, from the Brayford Pool

TG1010

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

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