This monochrome watercolour of part of the ruins of the Savoy Hospital, near the Strand, was bought at the sale of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833) in 1833 by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) in a lot that contained two other views of the ruins (TG0367 and TG0368) (Exhibitions: Christie’s, 26 June 1833, lot 98). Turner purchased numerous drawings at the posthumous sale of his early patron, a large majority of which were watercolours he had collaborated on with Girtin at Monro’s home at the Adelphi, close to the Savoy itself. As in this case, Girtin produced the pencil outline drawing and Turner then added the watercolour washes in a muted palette. The vast majority of the four hundred or so collaborations commissioned by Monro were made after the sketches of other artists, but, uniquely, this watercolour and another of the Savoy subjects (TG0368) were created after on-the-spot drawings made by Girtin around 1795 (TG0331 and TG0240), with the artist copying his own outlines onto a sheet of paper for Turner to colour. That certainly was the case with the exterior view of the Savoy Hospital (TG0331), but in this case it is possible that Turner added colour to an on-the-spot drawing as the pencil work now at the Yale Center for British Art (TG0240) is markedly more detailed than the underdrawing seen here, and the latter appears to have been made as a presentation piece for a patron as a demonstration of Girtin’s skills as a draughtsman.

This is not the only unique feature of this drawing as it is also the only case where Girtin produced both a Monro School work and a studio watercolour of the same composition (TG0348), and as a result it offers a unique opportunity to compare the way that Turner and Girtin employed the watercolour medium at this date. The most obvious point of contrast lies in the expressive use of a penned line by Girtin in this work, but, as Susan Morris has perceptively noted, there is also a different approach to light. For, whilst Girtin uses a more even glowing tone that creates a ‘pleasing regular pattern’, Turner concentrates a core of light on the back wall in the collaborative watercolour for Monro (Morris, 1986, p.14). The fact that Turner had not studied the subject at first hand presumably gave him the licence to dramatise the lighting. Other differences between the two watercolour versions of the composition are equally instructive. Thus, the Monro School drawing lacks the figures seen in Girtin’s version of the subject and it also omits the shutters in the window opening to the left, all of which suggests that the two watercolours were conceived quite independently for two different patrons, each with their own requirements.

The work has been known as ‘The Ruins of the Savoy Chapel’, but in fact it shows part of the hospital for the poor that was built in the shape of a large church between 1510 and 1515. By the early seventeenth century, however, the hospital was 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 the ruinous state shown here, whilst the Savoy Chapel itself remained intact. We can be even more precise about the position from which Girtin made his study of the interior of the ruins around 1795. He sketched from a low viewpoint in the northern transept of the ruined hospital dormitory looking to the north, with the modern buildings of the Strand appearing behind the blocked up late Gothic window.

The work is much faded, damaged by its extensive exposure to light when on exhibition. It was at some point subsequent to its production by Girtin and Turner mounted onto another sheet of paper with a pencil border, and from its size (25.5 × 33 cm, 10 × 13 in) we can be reasonably sure that it was inserted into an album such as those created by Monro to display the Italian and Swiss drawings produced for him by the two artists (Turner Bequest (CCCXXIII and CCCLXXIV)).

1794 - 1797

Buildings in the Process of Demolition, Said to Be the Ruins of the Savoy Palace

TG0367

1795 - 1796

An Exterior View of Part of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital

TG0368

1795 - 1796

An Exterior View of Part of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital

TG0368

1795 - 1796

An Exterior View of Part of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital

TG0331

1795 - 1796

An Interior View of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital

TG0240

1795 - 1796

An Exterior View of Part of the Ruins of the Savoy Hospital

TG0331

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

TG0348