- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- (?) Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) and Samuel Howitt (1756-1822)
- Title
-
- Windsor Great Park: Herne’s Oak with a Herd of Deer
- Date
- 1795 - 1796
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and pen and ink on paper
- Dimensions
- 28.6 × 42.2 cm, 11 ¼ × 16 ⅝ in
- Inscription
'Howitt' lower right, by Samuel Howitt
- Object Type
- Collaborations; Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Animal Study; The Landscape Park; Windsor and Environs
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1371
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001; Gallery Website
Provenance
Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74); then by descent to George Wyndham Hog Girtin (1835–1911) (lent to London, 1862; London, 1877); by a settlement to his sister, Mary Hog Barnard (née Girtin) (1828–99); her sale, Christie's, 31 May 1886, lot 59 as 'Herne’s Oak, with deer' by Samuel Howitt and Thomas Girtin; bought by 'Palser', £25 4s; J. Palser & Sons; ... J. Palser & Sons (stock no.17230); bought by Sabina Girtin, née Cooper (1878–1959), 4 August 1918, £20; given 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
London, 1862, no.942 as ’Scene in Windsor Forest’ by Samuel Howitt; London, 1877, no.273 as by Samuel Howitt; London, 1962a, no.167 as by Samuel Howitt ’worked on by Girtin’; Reading, 1969, no.55 as by Samuel Howitt ’worked on by Girtin’
Bibliography
YCBA Online as by Samuel Howitt (Accessed 16/09/2022)
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
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
Revisions & Feedback
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About this Work
This view of Windsor Great Park, one of a pair of landscapes with herds of deer (the other being TG1372), although not signed by the two artists, is likely to be another example of the collaboration between Girtin and the animal painter Samuel Howitt (1756–1822), his older contemporary (see TG1373 and TG1374). The attribution to the two artists working together on the same sheet was the source of much debate within the Girtin family, in whose possession the work was for much of its history. Tom Girtin (1913–94) thought that it was by Howitt but ‘worked on by Girtin’ (Girtin Archive, 12), whilst his father, Thomas Girtin (1874–1960), did not include the work in his catalogue of the artist’s watercolours with David Loshak (Girtin and Loshak, 1954). The first owner of the work was Girtin’s son, Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74), but it does not seem to have been inherited directly, and he presumably bought it on the art market and his descendant perhaps discounted the attribution on those grounds. At first sight this is indeed quite logical, but then again I am not sure that the style of the landscape is so very different from the two signed Howitt–Girtin collaborations. Though the evidence is hardly overwhelming, I suspect that this may be a case of Girtin, early in his career, adjusting his manner of painting to match that of his less talented partner.
The tree known as Herne’s Oak, in Windsor Great Park, was commonly identified in the eighteenth-century as the site of Falstaff’s final humiliation in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Merry Wives of Windsor. Falstaff’s disguise of stag’s horns suggested to more than one artist that a herd of deer was the perfect accompaniment for a scene featuring the ancient tree and ‘Windsor Forest’. The tree appears to have been felled in 1796, when it was accidentally included in George III’s (1738–1820) order to remove unsightly oaks from the park – that is, before the likely date of Girtin’s possible visit to Windsor. In any case, it is unlikely that Girtin would have worked from an on-the-spot sketch, especially as the picturesque ancient tree was the subject of a number of prints and drawings (see figure 1), any one of which he might have copied and incorporated into a more generalised forest scene for what was no more than hack employment, even for a young artist.
1795 - 1796
Landscape and Deer
TG1372
1795 - 1796
Stags Fighting amongst a Herd of Deer in Windsor Great Park, with the Castle in the Distance
TG1373
1795 - 1796
A Herd of Deer in Richmond Park
TG1374