- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- An Exterior View of Part of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital
- Date
- 1795 - 1796
- Medium and Support
- Graphite on paper
- Dimensions
- 27.9 × 19.7 cm, 11 × 7 ¾ in
- Inscription
‘Savoy Prison’ lower left by Thomas Girtin; ‘5’ top right
- Object Type
- Outline Drawing
- Subject Terms
- London and Environs; Urban Ruins
-
- Collection
- Versions
-
An Exterior View of Part of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital
(TG0368)
- Catalogue Number
- TG0331
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 119i as 'Ruins of the Savoy Palace'; '1795'
- Description Source(s)
- Auction Catalogue
Provenance
Leonard Gordon Duke (1890–1971); his sale, Sotheby’s, 30 November 1960, lot 15; bought by The Fine Art Society, £6; Derek Lockett (d.1993); his sale, Christie's, 11 June 1968, lot 28; bought by Spink & Son Ltd, London, 110 gns; Dr Theodore Besterman (1904–76); Spink & Son Ltd, London, 1975
Exhibition History
London, 1969, no.62; Spink’s, London, 1975, no.43
Place depicted
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About this Work
Girtin produced as many as ten views of the ruins in the precincts of the Savoy on a site adjacent to Somerset House that stretched uphill from the north bank of the Thames to the Strand. The three different compositions developed by Girtin have generally been described as showing the ruins of the Savoy Palace, but the medieval palace was actually rebuilt as a hospital for the poor after being substantially damaged during the Peasants’ Revolt (1381), and the great dormitories of the Savoy Hospital, built in the shape of a large basilica, were constructed between 1510 and 1515 to accommodate a hundred beds (see comparative image TG0240/2). By the early seventeenth century, however, the Hospital had been taken over, first for the treatment of injured soldiers and then as a barracks, before a fire in 1776 reduced much of the structure to ruins, though some of the ancillary buildings, including the Savoy Chapel and the prison, remained intact. Fortunately, the Hospital was well documented, both prior to and following the fire, and we are now therefore in a position to locate each of Girtin’s views with some precision.
In contrast to the position from which Girtin sketched An Interior View of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital (TG0240), a view that was adopted by a number of other artists, this idiosyncratic composition is more characteristic of his determination to seek out unusual angles from which to work. Although there is little detail to go on, it appears to show an oblique view of the eastern external facade of the ruined Savoy Hospital taken from a low viewpoint, with the unprepossessing structure of the chapel of the German Evangelical Reformed Church, built in 1771, visible to the right. The constricted space, the stacks of reclaimed timber and the partly demolished walls help to convey a sense of the confusing muddle of ruins and newer buildings still in use, which characterised the Savoy site at this date. It seems from Girtin’s erroneous inscription – ‘Savoy Prison’ – that the confusion extended to him as well. Though not without interesting passages of pencil work, the sketch’s economical style is more typical of Girtin’s utilitarian approach to recording the details of an architectural subject in preparation for a studio watercolour than of the more showy drawing he made for another view of the Savoy Hospital ruins (TG0240).
1795 - 1796
An Interior View of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital
TG0240
1795 - 1796
An Interior View of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital
TG0240