- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- (?) Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Unidentified Buildings, Herne Hill
- Date
- 1795 - 1796
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and pen and ink on wove paper (watermark: J WHATMAN)
- Dimensions
- 11 × 19 cm, 4 ⅜ × 7 ½ in
- Inscription
‘Herne Hill’ lower centre, by (?) Thomas Girtin
- Object Type
- Outline Drawing
- Subject Terms
- London and Environs
-
- Catalogue Number
- TG1454
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 177 as 'Called Herne Hill'; '1796–7'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001
Provenance
John Postle Heseltine (1843–1929); his posthumous sale, Sotheby’s, 29 May 1935, lot 313; volume bought by Bernard Squire, £32; Gilbert Davis (1899–1983); bought from him by the Gallery, 1959
Exhibition History
Squire Gallery, 1939, no.50
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 East
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
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
Hawes Fine Art
London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London
London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London
Pinckney’s Farm, Radwinter
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
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, University of Manchester
A House Seen across a Lake, 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
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
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
Old London Bridge, with the Shot Tower in Construction, and St Olave's Church
Private Collection
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About this Work
This view of an undistinguished row of buildings in Herne Hill, south of London, comes from a volume of Girtin’s pencil drawings that was put together by John Postle Heseltine (1843–1929). The drawings come from all phases of the artist’s career, covering a variety of subjects (for example, see TG1093 and TG1339), but none of them employ the heavy and unvarying outlines seen here, and there must therefore be some doubt about the attribution of the work to Girtin. That said, the inscription is not dissimilar to Girtin’s hand, and it may be that the crude outlines mean that the work was traced from another source. The support used is a wove paper with a Whatman watermark, just the sort that Girtin employed at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), where tracing images from other artists was a staple part of his work with his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). However, the works copied by the two artists invariably had a picturesque interest that is singly lacking in this view of a nondescript recently constructed terrace, which appears to have been depicted from an area of waste ground. It is hard to believe that this was the home of a patron, and one cannot imagine it providing the basis of a country house portrait of the sort that Girtin produced throughout his career. However, the unconventional nature of the image, somewhat comparable to the sketch that Girtin made of St George’s Row, Tyburn (TG1745), where he lived towards the end of his life, might actually constitute the soundest grounds on which to attribute the drawing to the artist. That said, how and why he came to depict a scene in rural Herne Hill will remain unknown unless something more can be discovered about the drawing’s early history or the artist’s connection to the subject. Hern Hill, as it was then known, was little more than a hamlet at this date, however, and the list of ratepayers does not include any name than can be associated with the artist (Nurse, 2016, p.15).
(?) 1796
Warkworth Castle, from the River Coquet
TG1093
(?) 1798
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures
TG1339
(?) 1801
St George’s Row, Tyburn
TG1745