For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser.
Works Thomas Girtin

The Watermill above the Bridge at Charenton: Pencil Study for Plate Nineteen of Picturesque Views in Paris

1802

Primary Image: TG1890: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), The Watermill above the Bridge at Charenton: Pencil Study for Plate Nineteen of 'Picturesque Views in Paris', 1802, graphite on laid paper, 13.7 × 27.2 cm, 5 ⅜ × 10 ⅝ in. British Museum, London (1868,0328.362).

Photo courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

Print after: Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), soft-ground etching, The Watermill above the Bridge at Charenton, 1 January 1803, 15.5 × 28.1 cm, 6 ⅛ × 11 ¹⁄₁₆ in. British Museum, London (1855,0609.1824).

Photo courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum

Description
Creator(s)
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
Title
  • The Watermill above the Bridge at Charenton: Pencil Study for Plate Nineteen of Picturesque Views in Paris
Date
1802
Medium and Support
Graphite on laid paper
Dimensions
13.7 × 27.2 cm, 5 ⅜ × 10 ⅝ in
Inscription

‘View of the Water Mill above the bridge at Charenton’ lower centre, by Thomas Girtin

Part of
Object Type
Drawing for a Print; Outline Drawing
Subject Terms
Paris and Environs; Wind and Water Mills

Collection
Catalogue Number
TG1890
Girtin & Loshak Number
477i as 'Water-Mill Above the Bridge at Charenton'
Description Source(s)
Viewed in 2001 and 2018

Provenance

John Girtin (1773–1821); John Jackson (d.1828); his posthumous sale, Foster’s, 24 April 1828, lot 321; bought by 'Tiffin'; ... 'Colnaghi'; bought from them by the Museum, 1868

Bibliography

Binyon, 1898–1907, no.81

About this Work

This view of the watermill near the old bridge at Charenton on the river Marne, east of Paris, was drawn on the spot by Girtin early in 1802 in preparation for plate nineteen of his Picturesque Views in Paris (see print after TG1890a). Having completed a series of highly detailed panoramic drawings in the capital itself, Girtin engaged the help of the playwright Thomas Holcroft (1745–1809) to ‘take views in the environs of Paris’ in a series of ‘short excursions’ to the sites ‘esteemed the most picturesque’ by contemporary artists (Holcroft, 1804, vol.2, p.488).1 Holcroft’s account of their trips, published in 1804, provides the only first-hand evidence of Girtin’s sketching practice, including, in this case, the fact that unlike in the city views, for which the artist almost certainly employed a camera obscura, here he worked freehand with great ‘dispatch’. Holcroft noted that the ‘village of Charenton is beautifully situated at the junction of two rivers; the Marne and the Seine’ and, given that ‘the views round it are many of them excellent, for the landscape painter: water, foliage, buildings, and mills [and] One or two of these views Girtin has preserved’ (Holcroft, 1804, vol.2, p.490). As this sketch indicates, Girtin did not make ‘finished’ drawings, doing just enough so that ‘all the objects were in their proper place, and sufficiently made out for him to accurately understand his own intentions’ (Holcroft, 1804, vol.2, p.491). Although these works are different in character from the city sketches, the artist continued to use the same support, which, as the paper historian Peter Bower has noted, is a 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 may have been made twenty years earlier.

The Watermill above the Bridge at Charenton: Tracing for Plate Nineteen of 'Picturesque Views in Paris'

Girtin’s soft-ground etching (see the print after, above) was published separately from the finished aquatint, on 9 August 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 in this case none seem to have survived.

1802

The Watermill above the Bridge at Charenton: Colour Study for Plate Nineteen of ‘Picturesque Views in Paris’

TG1890a

by Greg Smith

Place depicted

Footnotes

  1. 1 Holcroft’s unique eye-witness account of Girtin at work during the excursions they undertook in and around Paris in the early spring of 1802, published in the second volume of Travels from Hamburg, through Westphalia, Holland, and the Netherlands, to Paris, is transcribed in the Documents section of the Archive (1802 – Item 1).

Revisions & Feedback

The website will be updated from time to time and, when changes are made, a PDF of the previous version of each page will be archived here for consultation and citation.

Please help us to improve this catalogue


If you have information, a correction or any other suggestions to improve this catalogue, please contact us.