
1802
Bridgnorth
TG1755

1797 - 1798
An Imaginary Coastal Scene, with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea
TG1408
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Print after: William Pengree Sherlock (1776–c.1851), after Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), soft-ground etching, The Mill by a River, published by Thomas Palser, 31 July 1811, 24 × 31 cm, 9 ½ × 12 ¼ in. British Museum, London (1893,0612.35).
Photo courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Oppé, 1955, p.395; Wilcox, 1993, pp.16–17; p.58
1802
Bridgnorth
TG1755
1797 - 1798
An Imaginary Coastal Scene, with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea
TG1408
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum
Private Collection, Norfolk
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust)
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
Private Collection
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
Private Collection, Norfolk
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Private Collection
Private Collection
Private Collection
Private Collection
Private Collection
Private Collection
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Private Collection
Private Collection
Private Collection
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Untraced Works
Private Collection
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Private Collection
British Museum, London
British Museum, London
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Private Collection
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence
Private Collection, Norfolk
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Private Collection
Private Collection
British Museum, London
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester
Private Collection
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington
Private Collection
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
Private Collection
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
Tate, London
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Private Collection
Private Collection
Private Collection
British Museum, London
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
British Museum, London
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Private Collection
Private Collection
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
Private Collection
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About this Work
This view of a windmill by a river is known only from an etching, published in 1811, that is inscribed ‘Drawn by T. Girtin’. Given that the original on which the print is based has not otherwise been recorded, it is included here with a significant note of caution. There is thus no proof that the original drawing was by Girtin, and neither is there any indication of how closely the author of the etching, William Pengree Sherlock (1776–c.1851), followed his model, which may have been no more than a small sketch, and it is certainly not possible to give a date for the lost work. Despite this, the etching has featured extensively in the Girtin literature on account of its similarity to landscapes by the great Dutch artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606–69), in particular his The Mill (see figure 1), which came to London in 1793 from the collection of Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d’Orléans (1747–93) (Wilcox, 1993, pp.16–17 and 58). Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak were particularly keen to discern the influence of Rembrandt’s deep, sombre colouring on Girtin, suggesting that the personal experience of the artist’s oil panting was the catalyst for late works such as Bridgnorth (TG1755) (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, pp.88–89). Whilst there may be something in this argument, in this case the influence is more likely to have been felt at one remove, and I suspect that Girtin may have known the work through the engraving made by François Dequevauviller (1745–1807) and Jean Mathieu (1749–1815) (see figure 2), which, like the print after Girtin’s lost drawing, reverses Rembrandt’s composition. The crucial point, however, is that the image is far from a straightforward copy, contrary to the way that so many of Girtin’s watercolours closely follow their prototypes in the work of artists from earlier generations. Girtin’s Windmill includes a simpler landscape and a four-square smock mill of the type commonly seen on the banks of the Thames, and its relationship to Rembrandt’s composition is more in the form of an echo or variation on a theme. Though there is no suggestion that the lost drawing depicts an actual view, it may be that as with An Imaginary Coastal Scene, with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea (TG1408), Girtin created a suitable setting from a recollection of Rembrandt’s composition for one of the capital’s many mills.