This is one of three landscapes that Girtin produced in the first month of his stay in Paris from etchings by the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape artist Herman van Swanevelt (1603–55) (the others being TG1913 and TG1914). Girtin arrived in the French capital at the end of November 1801 and presumably acquired the etchings almost immediately, as he inscribed each of the watercolours ‘Girtin Paris 1801’. Why Girtin chose to mark his arrival in France by copying etchings of imaginary classical landscapes is far from clear, though he had by this date probably already made a number of copies after prints by earlier artists, such as Marco Ricci (1676–1730) (including TG1916). Girtin had travelled to France with his London panorama, hoping to put it on display, and it may be that with no other plans in mind – the idea for a set of prints of Paris views came later – he turned to a secondary source for inspiration, having been disappointed by the potential of French scenery as a subject. As he later noted in a conversation with Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809), the ‘landscapes of France’ were ‘spotty, naked, having no hedges and trees … with few grand masses, ragged broken lines, little verdure, and a prevailing grey tone’ – altogether unsuited to an artist like Girtin, in other words (Holcroft, 1804, vol.2, p.492).¹

Swanevelt’s etching Rest on the Flight into Egypt (see the source image above) provided everything the scenery of northern France lacked, though Girtin still set about simplifying the composition. The watercolour, which conforms to one of the standard sizes of his late works, roughly 30.5 × 53.3 cm (12 × 21 in), is much larger than the print, which measures 20 × 27 cm (8 ⅛ × 10 ⅝  in), but the artist opened up the landscape, omitting the overarching tree in the foreground and consequently creating a lighter and more picturesque scene where the more distant trees are arranged as ‘grand masses’ rather than showing up as individual specimens. These are washed in at speed, suggesting, if we did not know better, that the whole was sketched from life. Girtin was also careful to simplify the subject of the work, replacing a scene in the early life of Christ with a more generalised religious theme centred on a cave-dwelling hermit and a wayside cross. Significantly, he also translated the tones of the etching into an uncharacteristically colourful palette, which, in its unfaded condition, provides a startling contrast with the more muted works of his maturity. Could it be that Girtin travelled without pigments and had to change his palette, using only what he could obtain in the French capital? 

1801

A Wooded River in an Extensive Landscape

TG1913

1801

A River Scene with a Castle on a Cliff

TG1914

1800 - 1801

An Italianate Landscape with Two Monks

TG1916