This view of an overshot mill in North Wales was made at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), where Girtin and his contemporary Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) were employed across three winters, probably between 1794 and 1797. Their task, as they recalled to the diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821), was to copy ‘the outlines or unfinished drawings of’ principally John Robert Cozens (1752–97), but other artists too, including Girtin’s master, Edward Dayes (1763–1804). The ‘finished drawings’ they were commissioned to produce were the result of a strict division of labour: ‘Girtin drew in outlines and Turner washed in the effects’. As the young artists reported, ‘They went at 6 and staid till Ten’, with Turner receiving ‘3s. 6d each night’ whilst ‘Girtin did not say what He had’ (Farington, Diary, 12 November 1798).¹ The outcome of their joint labours was substantial, amounting to several hundred drawings many of which were copied from sketches by Dayes including a number of landscapes in the Lake District and in Wales.

When this catalogue of Girtin’s work first went online this drawing was titled A Mountainous Landscape with an Overshot Mill and the accompanying text suggested that the scene was ‘possibly in the Lake District’. However, in recent correspondence Jeremy Yates has pointed out that the watercolour clearly depicts Nant Mill near Betws Garmon in North Wales (email dated 17 November 2024). The mill which is located on the road between Beddgelert and Caernarfon was depicted in its picturesque setting on the river Gwyrfai by many artists including John Sell Cotman (1782–1842), Francis Towne (1739–1816) in a couple of works from 1777 (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle) and Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759–1817) whose engraved view comes closest to the Monro School watercolour (see figure 1). Turner and Girtin both passed along the road to Beddgelert in the summer of 1798, but neither had visited the area by the likely date of the production of this work, and the Monro School Welsh views were presumably made after compositions by other artists, principally Dayes, who also probably provided the models for the Lake District scenes. As with the numerous copies that Girtin and Turner created from compositions by Cozens, it was the slight sketches and outlines that Dayes made on his travels that were used as the source for their more finished watercolours. Monro’s posthumous sale in 1833 contained several hundred of Dayes’ sketches, including a dozen or so ‘Views of North Wales’ described as ‘blue and Indian ink sketches’, the materials favoured by the artist for his on-the-spot studies (Christie’s, 2 July 1833, lot 47). Typically, the precise Dayes source of this popular view of the picturesquely sited mill has not been traced, though this does not necessarily mean we should look elsewhere for its model. Few of Dayes’ sketches have survived and the fact that no source can be found suggests that it was a thoroughly unprepossessing drawing that required considerable transformational skills from the young artists.

Monro’s posthumous sale contained more than twenty ‘Views in Wales’ all of which were attributed to Turner (Christie’s, 26 June 1833, lots 87 and 88). The attribution of the Monro School copies solely to Turner has been challenged in recent years, following the publication of Andrew Wilton’s pioneering article in 1984 (Wilton, 1984a, pp.8–23), and Girtin’s contribution to this work is acknowledged in the catalogues of the collection by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown (Wilton, 2001, pp.33–34; Clarke, 2012, no.140, p.265). Although the watercolour was more extensively worked by Turner in the middle ground than was commonly the case with the Welsh views, enough of Girtin’s distinctive pencil work remains visible, particularly in the distant mountains, to be reasonably sure of his involvement, albeit at the most basic level, copying a simple outline from another drawing.