This view south west across the bay of Baia towards the islands of Ischia and Procida, off the Neapolitan coast, was copied from a composition by John Robert Cozens (1752–97) (see figure 1). It was produced at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), where Girtin and his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) were employed across three winters, probably between 1794 and 1797, to make ‘finished drawings’ from the ‘Copies’ of the ‘outlines or unfinished drawings of Cozens’. The majority of the resulting watercolours saw the two artists engaged in a unique collaboration; as they later recalled, Girtin ‘drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’ and, as the diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) reported, Turner received ‘3s. 6d each night’, though ‘Girtin did not say what He had’ (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).¹

Cozens’ on-the-spot sketch, dated 18 October 1782, is inscribed with details of the artist’s viewpoint, ‘From the road leading to the Schola di Virgilio’, and a numbered key listing the distant landmarks. The islet of Nisida is the eminence to the left, Procida is the dominant hill in the distance, and the small island of Ischia is in front, overlapping the promontory of Miseno, which encloses the Bay of Baia. The sketch is found at the beginning of the fourth of the seven sketchbooks associated with Cozens’ second Italian trip, which saw the artist travel to Naples in the company of his patron William Beckford (1760–1844). The Monro School watercolour was in all probability not copied directly from this sketch, however. An album put together by Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827), now in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, contains ‘215 “tracings” or drawings on oiled paper’, and this was lent to Monro for his copyists to work from (Sloan and Joyner, 1993, pp.89–91). The album contains more than seventy tracings from on-the-spot drawings in the first three of the sketchbooks, and these provided the basis for more than thirty Monro School works. There are only five tracings from the next three books, but there is no reason to think that many others did not exist, and it was presumably from these lost copies by Cozens himself that as many as thirty-five more watercolours were produced by Girtin and Turner, including this view of the islands off the Neapolitan coast. The notion that the Monro School artists worked from simple outline tracings, rather than the on-the-spot sketches, is supported by two considerations. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that Beckford would have lent out the sketchbooks and, given that Cozens took the trouble to make copies of so many of the drawings, it is clear that the patron, and not the artist, retained the books. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, Monro School copies such as this example never follow the shading or the distribution of light seen in the on-the-spot sketches, though they always replicate the basic outlines found in the tracings.

The joint attribution of a work that has hitherto been credited to Turner alone is not without significant problems, however. The relatively heavily worked colour, particularly in the foreground, all but obscures the pencil work, making it difficult to confirm Girtin’s involvement, whilst Turner’s contribution is also far from certain. The bland and undifferentiated washes used in the sky and on the sea, coupled with the overworked foreground in which the buildings occupy no credible space, are well below Turner’s standards. Another Monro School view across the Bay of Baia, taken from a higher viewpoint (TG0728), illustrates the way in which Turner’s usually economical addition of colour washes can enhance Girtin’s pencil outlines to create a convincing sense of depth and space. That work is on a significantly larger scale consistent with the size of the sketches that Cozens made on his first trip to Italy when he probably made a shorter visit to the Neapolitan coast. It may be the case, therefore, that its source was more compelling than the lost tracing that was presumably the material used in the production of this drawing. Nonetheless, I am not convinced that that is enough to account for the shortcomings of this watercolour and its attribution to Girtin and Turner working together comes with significant reservations.

1794 - 1797

The View over the Bay of Baia to Ischia and Procida, from near the Scuola de Virgilio

TG0728