On a technical note, the paper historian Peter Bower has identified the support used by Girtin as an off-white laid writing paper, manufactured by an unknown English maker (Bower, 2002, p.140; Bower, Report). This is different from the buff-grey laid wrapping paper that was used by both Porter and Munn, and this again points to the existence of two different castle subjects amongst the earliest Sketching Society drawings, since it was the responsibility of the evening’s host not only to choose the passage for illustration but also to provide the materials. It is also important to point out that the attribution of the drawing to Girtin is not without some uncertainty. It has been suggested that the work may in fact be by Cotman, and the simplified application of washes of grey in broad patterns does indeed have much in common with Girtin’s younger contemporary. However, the underlying pencil work appears to be in Girtin’s distinctive hand, and I suspect that the similarities in the handling to Cotman’s work reflect the older artist’s widespread influence at this date.
1799
The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper’s ‘The Task’
TG1501
About this Work
This monochrome study of a castle sited on the coast in a storm appears to have been made by Girtin at a meeting of the Sketching Society. It comes from a group of seven sketches from the same collection that all show a castle in a landscape, including works attributed with various degrees of certainty to Robert Ker Porter (1777–1842) (see figure 1), Paul Sandby Munn (1773–1845) (see figure 2), John Sell Cotman (1782–1842), George Samuel (active 1785–1823), Thomas Richard Underwood (1772–1836) and Augustus Wall Callcott (1779–1844). Unfortunately, unlike the group of sketches titled The Frozen Watermill (TG1501), the works are not inscribed with the artists’ names, and, if they were all made at the same meeting, this would have been at a slightly later period, when Cotman and Callcott were members, whereas Porter’s view clearly illustrates an unidentified passage chosen on the evening of 28 December 1799. This describes ‘the high embattled walls of the Castle … seen rising from a rock which stood in the midst of the Lake; a heavy draw bridge united it with the shore whose stupendous precipices were lost in awful grandeur’ (Sketching Society, Minute Book).1 The question then is whether Girtin attended the same meeting and chose to ignore the ‘solemn peace’ of the scene, taking his inspiration instead from a different part of the prose passage that describes the castle’s setting amongst ‘stupendous precipices’ and ‘wild & barren’ scenes. The fact that Girtin’s name is actually crossed out in the Society’s Minute Book suggests that his study may indeed date from later and that the seven Sketching Society castle subjects therefore come from two different sessions.