- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- (?) Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- The Windmill
- Date
- (?) 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 24.5 × 35.2 cm, 9 ⅝ × 13 ⅞ in
- Inscription
'Girtin' on the back, in a later hand in pencil
- Object Type
- Sketching Society Drawing
- Subject Terms
- Wind and Water Mills
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1507
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 340 as '"The Windmill"' by Thomas Girtin; 'Jan.1800.'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001 and May 2025
Provenance
George Wyndham Hog Girtin (1835–1911), by 1861; then by descent to Thomas Girtin (1874–1960); given to Tom Girtin (1913–94), c.1938; bought by John Baskett on behalf of Paul Mellon (1907–99), 1970; presented to the Center, 1975
Exhibition History
Cambridge, 1920, no.30 as ’The Old Mill, Stanstead’ by Thomas Girtin; London, 1962a, no.149; Reading, 1969, no.33 as 'The Windmill' by Thomas Girtin; New Haven, 1986a, no.126 as 'Landscape with a Windmill ... Formerly Attributed to’ Thomas Girtin
Bibliography
Gibson, 1916, p.216; Davies, 1924, pl.30; Mayne, 1949, p.53; Wilcox, 1993, p.55
Other entries in London and the Home Counties, Together with Miscellaneous Studies and Views
Windsor Castle, from the River Thames
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum
Great Bookham Church, from the East
Private Collection, Norfolk
Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust)
The Gateway, St Albans Abbey
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
St Albans Abbey, from the North West
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
St Albans Abbey, from the North West
Private Collection
An Interior View of St Albans Abbey, from the Crossing
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
The Interior of St Albans Abbey
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
Windsor Castle and the Great Park, from the South West
Private Collection, Norfolk
Windsor Great Park: Herne’s Oak with a Herd of Deer
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Stags Fighting amongst a Herd of Deer in Windsor Great Park, with the Castle in the Distance
Private Collection
A Herd of Deer in Richmond Park
Private Collection
A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section One: Somerset House to Blackfriars Bridge
Private Collection
A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Two: The Surrey Bank
Private Collection
A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Three: Westminster Bridge to York Stairs
Private Collection
Westminster, from the West Corner of the Adelphi Terrace
Private Collection
The Thames with St Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Shipping on the Thames, Looking down Limehouse Reach towards Greenwich, with the Church of St Alfege in the Distance
Private Collection
A Haystack on a Farm, on the Road to Harrow-on-the-Hill
Private Collection
A Panoramic Landscape, near Norwood
Private Collection
Westminster Abbey, Seen from Green Park and the Queen's Basin
National Gallery of Art, Washington
St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
St Paul's Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Untraced Works
St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Private Collection
St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
A River Scene, with Boats
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
An Imaginary Coast Scene with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea
Private Collection
London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London
London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London
Turver’s Farm, Radwinter
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A Farm with an Unidentified Windmill
Private Collection
Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence
Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Private Collection, Norfolk
Trees and Pond, Said to Be near Bromley; A Slight Sketch of a Man
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection
A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection
The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone-next-Dartford
British Museum, London
A Farmhouse in a Woodland Setting, Said to Be in Devon
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Farm Buildings, Probably in Surrey
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester
Tintern Village, Seen across the Forge Pond, Formerly Known as ‘The Mill-Pond’
Private Collection
A Picturesque House Overlooking a River, with Distant Windmills
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington
The West End of an Unidentified Church
Private Collection
Effingham Churchyard, Formerly Known as 'A Country Churchyard'
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
An Unidentified Windmill, Probably in Lambeth
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston
Unidentified Buildings, Herne Hill
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
Study of a Sailor on Board a Ship; A Fishing Boat
Private Collection
The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper's The Task
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
An Unidentified Subject, Probably from James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian
Tate, London
The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A Study of a Woman Reading; A Slight Study of a Seated Woman
Private Collection
Portrait Study of a Man, Said to Be the Artist George Barret the Younger
Private Collection
A Study of a Lion from the Tower of London
Private Collection
An Open Field with a Cart and Horses, Known as ‘The Carter’
British Museum, London
A Church Seen across Fields, with Another Sketch Depicting a Woman
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
A Landscape with Figures by Railings
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Self-Portrait of the Artist at Work
British Museum, London
An Unidentified Landscape, with a Church amongst Trees
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A Cottage and a Windmill Surrounded by Trees
Private Collection
St Paul’s Cathedral, from the Thames
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Head of a Youth, Here Identified as Joseph Mallord William Turner
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Old London Bridge, with the Shot Tower in Construction, and St Olave's Church
Private Collection
Footnotes
- 1 Verse 6. The poem was originally published in Poems, Chiefly Pastoral in 1766.
- 2 Details of the Society’s Laws, the names of attendees, and excerpts from the selected poems are transcribed in the Documents section of the Archive (1799 – Item 5). Munn’s drawing is actually dated 1800 and is slightly smaller than this work.
- 3 From an inscription on the back of Francia’s drawing Landscape Composition: Moonlight (Victoria and Albert Museum, London (477–1883)). The inscription is transcribed in full in the Documents section of the Archive (1799 – Item 4).
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About this Work
Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak thought that this view of a windmill was a Sketching Society subject produced by Girtin, no doubt because it seems to have been in the family collection for over a century (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, pp.180–81). However, Susan Morris in her 1986 catalogue of the Girtin collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Morris, 1986, p.51) reattributed the view to François Louis Thomas Francia (1772–1839), noting that it was ‘probably done at a meeting of the Sketching Society on December 7, 1799’ to illustrate lines from A Landscape by John Cunningham (1729–73). The short poetic passage chosen by the evening’s host, Thomas George Worthington (unknown dates), was inscribed in the Minute Book for that date:1
High upon the daisy’d hill,
Rising from the slope of trees,
How the wings of yonder mill
Labour in the busy breese!
The same source records that in addition to Francia, Worthington and Girtin, the meeting was also attended by Robert Ker Porter (1777–1842), Thomas Richard Underwood (1772–1836), George Samuel (active 1785–1823), John Charles Denham (1777–1867), and Paul Sandby Munn (1773–1845) whose contribution (see figure 1) could possibly be a work now in Leeds Art Gallery (Sketching Society, Minute Book).2 However, whilst Morris is surely correct in identifying the poetic passage used here I am by no means convinced by her confident attribution of the work to Francia. It is not that I think that the work is either of a superior merit or is demonstrably in Girtin’s manner, but experience has taught me that in the absence of contemporary inscriptions identifying the precise authorship of sketches made of the same poetic passage using the same materials is problematic if not impossible. If ever there was a case for using a question mark in an attribution it is here and I have therefore reverted to the old tradition of giving the drawing to Girtin with a query against his name.
Girtin is documented as having visited twelve of the Society’s meetings in 1799 and early 1800, though only three or perhaps four of his contributions have been identified. Given the artist’s posthumous fame this is a surprisingly small number and intriguingly none of them include the subjects from ‘poetick passages’ that were ‘more particularly tending to Landscape’, which he himself chose from the better known literary works of James Thomson (1700–48), Oliver Goldsmith (c.1728–74) and James Macpherson (1736–96).3