- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Hereford Cathedral, from across the River Wye
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite and watercolour on paper
- Dimensions
- 38 × 49 cm, 15 × 19 ¼ in
- Inscription
'from Mr Leader's sale' on the back, by Charles Sackville Bale
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1364
- Description Source(s)
- Auction Catalogue
Provenance
John Temple Leader (1810–1903); his sale, probably Christie’s, 18 March 1843, lot 58 as 'View of the old Bridge at Gloucester - evening scene'; bought by ‘Ch Hall’, £16 (presumably Chambers Hall (1786–1855) though the work cannot be linked with any in his munificent gift of Girtin's works to the British Museum); ... Charles Sackville Bale (1791–1880) (lent to London, 1875); his posthumous sale, Christie’s, 13 May 1881, lot 85; bought by 'Norris', £110 5s; J. Palser & Sons; ... Mrs D. M. Wardley; her sale, Sotheby’s, 19 November 1970, lot 98; bought by John Baskett, £1,700; Sir John Clermont Witt (1907–82); his widow, Lady Margaret Witt (1910–84); her posthumous sale, Sotheby’s, 19 February 1987, lot 78, unsold; Thos. Agnew & Sons
Exhibition History
London, 1875, no.45 as 'Hereford Cathedral, from the Banks of the Wye'; Agnew’s, 1988, no.149
Bibliography
Wedmore, 1876, p.116; Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.208 as 'Untraced ... Hereford Cathedral, from the Banks of the Wye'
Place depicted
Other entries in The 1798 Welsh Tour:
Sketches and Subsequent Watercolours
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Tate, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Private Collection, North Wales
Caernarfon: A Street Scene with Plas Mawr
Tate, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
British Museum, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
British Museum, London
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
A Bridge over the Glaslyn, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
Private Collection
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake), Looking towards Cadair Idris
Private Collection
A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
British Museum, London
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
British Museum, London
An Unidentified Landscape, Possibly the Vale of Clwyd
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Valle Crucis Abbey: From the Cloister Looking Towards the Dormitory
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey: The Chapter House, from the South West
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A River Scene, Probably the Dee near Corwen
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
The Cloisters of Chester Cathedral
Private Collection
The Red Castle, from Hawk Lake, with a Distant View of Shrewsbury
Private Collection
Wroxeter: The Roman Wall
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
The Old Severn Bridge at Bridgnorth
British Museum, London
Hereford Cathedral, from across the River Wye
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
An Unidentified Valley, Probably in North Wales
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Cadair Idris, from the Estuary near Barmouth
Private Collection
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About this Work
This sadly faded watercolour of Hereford Cathedral, looking from the south west across the river Wye, is the latest of a series of different views of the building painted by Girtin (the others being TG0070, TG0155 and TG0166). The three larger views were all created at the outset of Girtin’s career, around 1792–93, when the artist was either still apprenticed to Edward Dayes (1763–1804) or had access to his master’s drawings, for none of them are based on his own on-the-spot sketches. The young artist did not have the means to travel to Hereford and therefore depended on secondary sources for his compositions. Dayes produced a similar view of the cathedral rising above the Wye Bridge, which was published as an engraving in 1795 (see figure 1), but this is surely not the source for Girtin’s later watercolour, which is taken from a little further away and consequently shows more of the body of the church. More to the point, there is also evidence that Girtin’s watercolour was based on a more recent sketch, for, as the text that accompanies the print notes, building work had still not been completed following the fall of the cathedral’s west end in 1786, and Dayes’ view includes the scaffolding that is conspicuously absent in Girtin’s depiction.
If Girtin’s view was made from an on-the-spot sketch, the question still remains as to when a visit took place, for it is not likely that the artist would have made a special trip to the cathedral city for the sole purpose of producing a fairly modest studio watercolour. The obvious answer would be at some point during the summer of 1798, when Girtin visited North Wales. Hereford is a good way south of any other known stop on the 1798 trip, but it is just possible that the visit to Bristol, which I have dated to 1797, took place a year later as a prelude to a journey north to Wales, with Hereford on the way. The point, however, is that as is so often the case, we do not have the documentary evidence to make precise calculations about the artist’s movements, and a work like Hereford Cathedral, from across the River Wye, where Girtin’s source does not survive, might have been worked up from a drawing by another artist who did visit the city.
The poor condition of the watercolour poses a challenge for the modern viewer as the colour has faded throughout, leaving little more than a monochrome shadow of the original. Could it be that it once depicted an ‘evening scene’, as described in a sale from 1843, when the work was wrongly identified as showing Gloucester Cathedral? Fortunately, the work was reproduced as a soft-ground etching in 1811 (see the print after, above), and William Pearson (1772–1849) made a full-scale watercolour copy (see figure 2). However, although the latter seems to have preserved at least some of the original colouring, the bland effect does little to recapture the mood of Girtin’s original, other than to confirm the tranquillity of the scene.
1792 - 1793
Hereford Cathedral
TG0070
1793
Hereford Cathedral, from the River Wye
TG0155
1792 - 1793
A Distant View of Hereford Cathedral
TG0166