This view of the Pont au Change, the Théâtre de la Cité, the Pont Neuf and the Conciergerie Prison, taken from the Pont Notre Dame, was drawn on the spot by Girtin early in 1802 in preparation for plate nine of his Picturesque Views in Paris (see print after TG1876a). Frustrated in his attempt to show his London panorama in Paris, Girtin took up the suggestion of his patron Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753–1827) and made a series of detailed pencil drawings of the French capital, which he reproduced as soft-ground etchings on his return to London in May, though they were not finally published until after his death, with the addition of aquatint to create tones similar to those in his watercolours. The brief cessation of hostilities between Britain and France, known as the Peace of Amiens, attracted thousands of British visitors to Paris, and so Girtin’s prints were targeted at a tourist audience keen for souvenirs of their trip and who prized carefully rendered details of the city’s buildings and inhabitants. To ensure such fidelity, Girtin appears to have employed a camera obscura for about half of the pencil drawings, and the modest size of this instrument required him to use small pieces of paper from which he assembled his mostly panoramic images of the scenery along the river Seine. Uniquely amongst the set of sketches, the three sheets used for the drawing are set vertically so that the proportions of the view are noticeably less extended, much like plate ten, and the two joins are also not quite aligned. All but one of the supports used by Girtin in the twenty-one Paris sketches he produced has been identified by the paper historian Peter Bower as the same cream laid writing paper, made by the Blauw and Briel company in Holland (Smith, 2002b, p.141; Bower, Report). This, he believes, was bought by Girtin in Paris, and it may have been made up to twenty years earlier. 

Girtin’s soft-ground etching (see the print after, above) was published separately from the finished aquatint, on 12 July 1802. To create this autograph print, the artist first traced his own drawing, reversing the image in the process (see figure 1), and then, using the tracing as a template, impressed the lines onto an etching plate coated in a tacky ground of an acid-resistant mix. Lifting the tracing and taking away the ground where the lines had been pushed in, he would then have immersed the plate in acid, which would have bitten into the unprotected areas. Cleaned up, the plate, with the etched lines now according with the direction of Girtin’s original drawing, could then be used to print from. Such a complex procedure employed by a novice printmaker like Girtin no doubt required a number of proof stages, though none appears to have survived for this plate. 

The view looking west from the Pont Notre Dame is focused on the Pont au Change, the bridge that connects the Isle de la Cité to the right bank at Châtelet, with the Louvre and the Pont Neuf beyond. Up until a few years before Girtin’s time, the bridge was surmounted by houses that were traditionally occupied by money lenders, hence its name. Also included in the view is the Théâtre de la Cité, identified by a sign in the drawing, whilst beyond that is the Palais de Justice, which can be recognised from the two semi-circular windows, and on the corner is the Tour de l’Horloge, dating from the fourteenth century. For British visitors fascinated by the events of the French Revolution, though, the main point of interest is likely to have been the Conciergerie prison, from where so many prisoners were taken to the site of their execution, including, most famously, the last French queen, Marie Antoinette (1755–93). This may have been the reason why Girtin’s drawing was adapted for one of the sets for Thomas Dibdin’s (1771–1841) pantomime Harlequin’s Habeas, or The Hall of Spectres, which opened at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, on 27 December 1802, a month after the artist’s death. The second act of the pantomime was set in France and Songs, Chorusses, and a Sketch of the Scenery in Harlequin’s Habeas lists the set for scene six as ‘Pont-au-Change, Conciergerie, &c. From a Drawing taken on the Spot by the late Mr. Girtin’. The set for the next scene, showing ‘St. Dennis’s Gate, Paris’ (Porte Saint-Denis), was also based on a drawing by Girtin (TG1877) (Dibdin, 1802). Such was the popularity of the Christmas pantomime that many more people would have known Girtin’s views of Paris from Dibdin’s sets than from the aquatints. 

1802

The Pont au Change, the Théâtre de la Cité, the Pont Neuf and the Conciergerie Prison, Taken from the Pont Notre Dame: Colour Study for Plate Nine of ‘Picturesque Views in Paris’

TG1876a

1802

The Porte Saint-Denis, Viewed from the Suburbs: Possible Study for Plate Ten of ‘Picturesque Views in Paris’

TG1877