- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- John Sell Cotman (1782-1842)
- Title
-
- Tintern Village, Seen across the Forge Pond, Formerly Known as ‘The Mill-Pond’
- Date
- (?) 1800
- Medium and Support
- Watercolour on paper
- Dimensions
- 17.8 × 26 cm, 7 × 10 ¼ in
- Object Type
- Formerly attributed to Thomas Girtin; Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Picturesque Vernacular; The Wye River
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1434
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 216 as '"The Mill-Pond"' by Thomas Girtin; '1797'
- Description Source(s)
- Girtin Archive Photograph
Provenance
Isaac Horrop; Christie’s, 28 May 1926, lot 8 as 'A River Scene'; R. F. Goldschmidt; Christie’s, 26 June 1941, lot 39 as 'Yorkshire Dale'; bought by Thos. Agnew & Sons, £21; Winifred M. Church; her sale, Sotheby's, 4 May 1949, lot 3 as 'The Millpond'; bought by Thos. Agnew & Sons, £130 (stock no.5898); Sir John Stuart Agnew, 3rd Baronet (1879–1957) (Girtin and Loshak, 1954); untraced
Exhibition History
Agnew’s, 1942, no.57, £55; Agnew’s, 1943, no.74, £47 5s; Agnew’s, 1950, no.91, £150; Agnew’s, 1952, no.57; Agnew’s, 1953a, no.85 as 'The Mill-Pond' by Thomas Girtin
Place depicted
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
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
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 This was confirmed by Miklós Rajnai who co-authored John Sell Cotman 1782 –1842: Early Drawings (1798–1812) in Norwich Castle Museum where the drawing is catalogued as no.4 and titled A House by Water.
- 2 Three works in Cotman’s Girtinesque manner are illustrated in Anne Lyles and Greg Smith, Girtin’s Influence on Contemporary Watercolour Practice (Smith, 2002b, pp.234–53).
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About this Work
This view of buildings seen across a body of water is known only from a poor-quality black and white photograph and although I expressed grave reservations at the time of the launch of this site about both its traditional title, The Mill-Pond, and its attribution to Thomas Girtin, it was not until I was contacted by Jeremy Yates in July 2023 that these issues were resolved. Yates confirmed my suspicion that the watercolour was in fact painted by a young John Sell Cotman (1782–1842) and he pointed out in his email (dated 25 July 2023) that it is based on a sketch by Cotman in the collection of Norwich Castle Museum (see figure 1) that is inscribed ‘July 2nd, 1800’.1 Moreover, Yates has also been able to identify the subject of the sketch and the resulting watercolour as showing a view of the village of Tintern seen from across the forge pond from the Beaufort Arms. As Yates notes, a sketch by the diarist/traveller John Byng, later Fifth Viscount Torrington (1743–1813), clearly shows the same scene albeit drawn nineteen years earlier (Torrington, Diaries, vol.1, p.24). Cotman would have been familiar with the work of Girtin by the summer of 1800, both through his association with the Sketching Society and his attendance at the home of Dr Thomas Monro where he made a number of copies of Girtin’s collaborations with Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) (see TG0815 figure 1). It is not surprising, therefore, that his earliest watercolours can be mistaken for those of Girtin, a more established artist whose style influenced a generation of younger landscape artists that also included John Varley (1778–1842), Peter de Wint (1784–1849), and, briefly, John Constable (1776–1837).2
1795 - 1796
Vessels in the Harbour at Dover, with the Castle Beyond
TG0815