He died far too young, but Thomas Girtin left a wealth of wonderful art that is still thrilling experts today Capital work
CHRISTIE’S has a big sale of old master and British drawings in New York this week, but given that this watercolour of St Paul’s Cathedral is expected to sell for $250,000 – that’s about £190,000 – I won’t be among the bidders.
Plenty will though. The drawing is the pick of three in the sale by Thomas Girtin, although interestingly the stronger money will be on JMW Turner’s view of Lake Lucerne, the pre-sale high estimate for which is greater by $50,000.
It will be fascinating to learn which of the two draws the higher bidding. But who was the better artist?
It depends whom you ask. Turner is considered the greatest English painter of the 19th century, but he himself recognised the brilliance of his friend and painting companion.
Girtin painted two virtually identical versions of St Paul’s in about 1797, one of which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, each exhibiting his skill as a technical draughtsman as well as a watercolourist.
One or other was seen by Turner who remarked: “Girtin, no man living could do this but you.” Indeed, after Girtin’s untimely death in 1802 aged just 27, Turner is said to have remarked: “Had poor Tom lived, I should have starved.”
Girtin was also the more amenable, earning the nickname “Honest Tom” because of his mild manner. In contrast, Turner was the rude introvert, whom people tolerated only for Girtin’s sake.
About 800 works by Girtin are known to have survived, their quality testifying to the artist’s extraordinar y skill. However, Girtin was denied the distinctions that Turner enjoyed.
They were born in the same year, 1775, and probably met at the home of Dr Thomas Monro, George III’s physician, who invited young artists to study and copy the great collection of English art that he had amassed.
In his diary for 1798, the artist Joseph Farrington recorded that Turner and Girtin went to the doctor’s home over a period of three years where they were employed in copying or completing the unfinished drawings of other artists.
They became great friends and together learned techniques that were to change the face of “stained drawing ” and lead to the formation of the English school of watercolour drawing.
However, a year later Farrington noted in his diary that “Mr Lascelles (of Harewood House in Yorkshire) as well as Lady Sutherland are disposed to set up Girtin against Turner who, they say, effects his purpose by industry, the former more for genius ; Turner finishes [his works] too much”.
If there were some conspiracy, it was short-lived. In 1802, Girtin was found dead in his studio in the Strand, killed by either an asthma attack or consumption.
His death cleared the way for Turner to triumph. It robbed the art world of another genius with an acute eye for the colour and beauty of nature and the dramatic effect that light and perspective can inject into watercolour painting.
Girtin was born in Southwark in sight of St Paul’s dome, the son of a well-heeled brushmaker of Huguenot descent. However, the father died and when Girtin was aged three, his mother married again to a Mr Vaughan, a drawer of textile patterns who encouraged the child’s first attempts at painting.
Girtin subsequently was apprenticed to Edward Dayes (1763-1804) a watercolourist and engraver who painted topographical views in Wales and the Lake District.
Girtin and Turner both attended evening drawing classes and worked side by side colouring prints for a dealer in King Street, Covent Garden.
Working together on compositions, they apparently took turns, one drawing outlines while the other painted the colours.
Girtin began exhibiting his
watercolours at the Royal Academy in 1794 and he is credited with creating the style known as Romantic watercolour painting. Two years later he won the patronage of Viscount Edward Lascelles, who commissioned him to paint views and landscapes around Harewood House, his country estate. Turner followed him there a year later.
Sketching tours in the North of England, North Wales and the West Country followed in 1797, producing among other works a view of the hills and hedge-fringed fields of Dorset rolling down to the coast at the Victorian resort of Lyme Regis, pictured, which also features in the Christie’s sale.
By 1799, Girtin had added Lady Sutherland and the art collector Sir George Beaumont to his list of influential patrons, but his health was beginning to suffer.
He married the 16-yearold daughter of a rich London goldsmith in 1800, but by 1801 he was spending half the year in Paris on the advice of his doctor who thought the climate might be better for his asthma.
While in Paris he made a series of studies of the city, 20 of which were published posthumously by his brother in 1803. The etching, pictured, depicts the village of Choisy from the banks of the River Seine, which completes the trio of Girtin’s work in the Christie’s sale.
He returned to London in 1802 but died in his studio in the November, Turner attending his funeral at St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden near to where the two first met.