- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- (?) François Louis Thomas Francia (1772-1839)
- 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
- 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
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; YCBA Online as by François Louis Thomas Francia (Accessed 17/09/2022)
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
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
St James’s Park, with Westminster Abbey in the Distance
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
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
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
Private Collection
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 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).
- 2 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 has attributed the view to François Louis Thomas Francia (1772–1839), and, though in the absence of any contemporary inscription this cannot be confirmed, she is surely right to say that the sketch is not by Girtin (Morris, 1986, p.51). Morris has also rightly suggested that the drawing was made at a meeting of the Society on 7 December 1799 and that it therefore illustrates a passage from A Landscape by John Cunningham (1729–73), from Poems, Chiefly Pastoral (1766), which was chosen by the evening’s host, Thomas George Worthington (unknown dates), and which is inscribed in the Minute Book for that date:
High upon the daisy’d hill,
Rising from the slope of trees,
How the wings of yonder mill
Labour in the busy breese! (verse 9)
The same source records that Girtin attended the meeting too, as did Paul Sandby Munn (1773–1845), whose watercolour has been traced (see figure 1), though curiously it is dated 1800 (Sketching Society, Minute Book).1 Girtin is documented as having visited twelve of the meetings in 1799 and early 1800, though only three or perhaps four of his Sketching Society subjects have survived, and none of these include the subjects from ‘poetick passages’ that were ‘more particularly tending to Landscape’, which he himself chose from the work of James Thomson (1700–1748), Oliver Goldsmith (c.1728–74) and James Macpherson (1736–96).2