The illusion that this work was produced at speed as a spontaneous response to a newly discovered vista is enhanced by the artist’s retention of the vertical drying fold seen to the right. This ‘unsightly’ side effect of the production process involved in handmade paper, which saw the sheet left to dry folded on a rope, was said by early writers to be prized by a certain type of collector as a sign of Girtin’s ‘originality’, and the artist’s willingness to leave it prominently visible at the edge of this sheet is one of the more wilful instances of his determination to break down the boundaries between the sketch and the studio watercolour (Pyne, 1823a, p.67).1 Another distant view of Kirkstall Abbey has been attributed to Girtin in the past (see figure 1), though it was not included in the catalogue of the artist’s watercolours published by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak (Girtin and Loshak, 1954). Even though the drawing was said to have come from the collection of the artist’s son, Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74), prior to being sold from the family collection in 1884 (Davis, Castleton, Sherborne, 2 December 1884, lot 51), it is clear that the watercolour is not by Girtin. Indeed, it seems to be partly based on an engraving of a view of Kirkstall Abbey by Edward Dayes (1763–1804) (see figure 2) that was not published until 1808, though it could of course have been worked from an untraced sketch.
1800
Kirkstall Abbey, from Kirkstall Hill
TG1635
1800 - 1801
Kirkstall Abbey, from Kirkstall Bridge, Morning
TG1636
1802
Kirkstall Abbey, from the Canal, Evening
TG1637
1799 - 1800
Trees in a Glade Overlooking a Lake
TG1404
1800 - 1801
A Torrent by a Clump of Trees
TG1770
About this Work
This little-known distant view of what appears to be Kirkstall Abbey, seen from a tree-lined track to the south, is in excellent condition, though how much it can be used as a guide to the original appearance of the three larger watercolours of the famous ruins, each of which has faded to a differing degree, is open to question (TG1635, TG1636 and TG1637). For, though the work may show the same subject, its smaller scale reflects a very different aesthetic, and I suspect that it was produced to meet the different demands of the market for Girtin’s sketches. Indeed, I am by no means convinced that the watercolour is not at least partly a work of the imagination and that its ostensible similarity to Kirkstall is actually used to help create the illusion that it was sketched on the spot, even though the careful, multiple layering of washes indicates that it is a studio work. Rather than a contrast with the larger late views of Kirkstall, therefore, the comparison that springs more readily to mind when looking at the work is with Trees in a Glade Overlooking a Lake (TG1404), which reimagines a composition by John Robert Cozens (1752–97), View on the Galleria di Sopra, Lake Albano (see TG1404 figure 1), which the artist could not have seen for himself. A series of late tree studies, such as A Torrent by a Clump of Trees (TG1770), similarly purport to have been sketched on the spot but actually appear to be exercises in a type of naturalistic imaginative landscape. In contrast, the large Kirkstall views may have moved on from their antiquarian precedents, but they are still rooted in a topographical tradition that is alien to this different commodity. Even the resting traveller, familiar from many of Girtin’s landscape views, seems out of place here when worked on such a disproportionate scale.