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Works Thomas Girtin after (?) James Moore

A Timber Framed House, near Hastings

1794 - 1795

 

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) after (?) James Moore (1762-1799)
Title
  • A Timber Framed House, near Hastings
Date
1794 - 1795
Medium and Support
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
15.2 × 23.5 cm, 6 × 9 ¼ in
Object Type
Outline Drawing; Work after an Amateur Artist
Subject Terms
Picturesque Vernacular; Sussex View

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG0190
Description Source(s)
Girtin and Loshak, 1954

Provenance

Maas Gallery, London, 1962

Bibliography

Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.154; Brown, 1982, p.328

About this Work

It has not been possible to trace an image of this pencil drawing of a highly picturesque half-timbered house near Hastings, which was last noted as being in a private collection in London. The pencil was once attributed to Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851). However, in his catalogue of the watercolours in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, David Brown stated that it ‘is certainly by Girtin’, and he identified it as the source for a watercolour in the museum’s collection (TG0248) (Brown, 1982, p.328). The author followed Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak’s suggestion that the drawing was made from an untraced sketch by Girtin’s first significant patron, the antiquarian and amateur artist James Moore (1762–99), and that it possibly shows a view in Shropshire. However, Brown did not recognise that the building depicted here is shown from a different angle in another Moore drawing in the same collection (TG0190a). Given the presence of that work in an album of drawings that is heavily weighted towards sketches made on Moore’s visits to Sussex and Kent in 1793 and 1795, it comes as no surprise that the subject has subsequently been identified as showing a fine example of a half-timbered Weald house. Located near to Hastings it was the subject of a number of watercolours and prints by artists who were presumably en route to the picturesque sketching destination on the coast (see TG0248 figure 1 and TG0294 figure 1).1 The album contains a number of examples of where Girtin enhanced Moore’s sketches, though it is not possible to say whether that was the case here and consequently if the drawing was therefore begun on the spot by the patron.

The suggestion that the drawing was made in preparation for the Ashmolean watercolour (TG0248) is also open to question. Girtin repeated the composition in a small colour sketch made on card for Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833) (TG0294), and it appears that this pencil drawing, like the forty or so outlines in the Turner Bequest that also came from Monro’s collection, is related instead to a commission that resulted in as many as sixty sketch-like watercolours, all measuring roughly 3 × 4 ¾ in (7.6 × 12.1 cm). Although confirmation of the fact must wait, it seems that this drawing too was made at the home of Monro even though it was copied from a Moore original.

1793 - 1794

An Ancient House, Possibly in Sussex

TG0248

(?) 1795

A Tudor House

TG0190a

1793 - 1794

An Ancient House, Possibly in Sussex

TG0248

1795 - 1796

An Ancient House

TG0294

1793 - 1794

An Ancient House, Possibly in Sussex

TG0248

1795 - 1796

An Ancient House

TG0294

by Greg Smith

Footnotes

  1. 1 These include watercolours by: Henry Morton (active c.1807–25), Old Buildings at Hastings (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection (B1975.4.647); Paul Sandby Munn (1773–1845), Cottage at Hastings (Roseberys, 29 March 2023, lot 128); James Bourne (1773–1854), The Ost House at Hastings (Guildhall Art Gallery, London (1553)).

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