This view of the Pont Neuf, with Notre Dame beyond, was drawn on the spot by Girtin early in 1802 in preparation for plate seven of his Picturesque Views in Paris (see print after TG1872a). 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 (Hardie, 1966–68, vol.2, p.8; Smith, 2017–18, pp.32–35). 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. 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 6 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 the only one to survive in this case does not include any of the corrections and amendments that are common elsewhere (Victoria and Albert Museum, London (E.615–1907)). 

The College of the Four Nations (also known as the Collège Mazarin), which is at the centre of the composition with its distinctive dome, was suppressed during the French Revolution and the building subsequently became known as the Palais de l’Institut de France. The building, together with the Louvre and the west towers of Notre Dame, also feature in plate six (see print after TG1871a), whilst the Pont Neuf again appears prominently in plate eight (see print after TG1874). Such a lack of variety was perhaps inevitable given that at the heart of the publication are three downriver views taken from points no more than a hundred metres apart. Having already studied the river facade of the Louvre on a number of occasions, Girtin was presumably content to leave the left part of this drawing in a relatively sketchy state, with the boats, in particular, unfinished. Much of the detail here was therefore improvised by Girtin as he worked on the etching plate, though he still followed the carefully noted architectural features. 

1802

The Pont Neuf, Part of the Louvre, Notre Dame and the College of the Four Nations: Colour Study for Plate Seven of ‘Picturesque Views in Paris’

TG1872a

1802

The Tuileries Palace and the Pont Royal, Taken from the Pont de la Concorde: Colour Study for Plate Six of ‘Picturesque Views in Paris’

TG1871a

1802

The Pont Neuf and the Mint: Pencil Study for Plate Eight of ‘Picturesque Views in Paris’

TG1874