- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Trees and Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour, bodycolour and scratching out on laid paper
- Dimensions
- 21 × 31.5 cm, 8 ¼ × 12 ⅜ in
- Inscription
‘Girtin’ lower right, by Thomas Girtin (the signature has been cut, suggesting that it once extended onto an original mount which has been lost); 'A Pit nr Bromley Coloured from Nature Girtin' on an old mount
- Object Type
- On-the-spot Colour Sketch; Studio Watercolour
- Subject Terms
- Dover and Kent; Lake Scenery
-
- Collection
- Catalogue Number
- TG1420
- Girtin & Loshak Number
- 273 as 'Trees and Pond near Bromley'; '1798'
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2001
Provenance
'Statham'; his untraced sale, Christie’s, 1861, unknown lot; bought by George Wyndham Hog Girtin (1835–1911) (lent to London, 1875); then by descent to Thomas Girtin (1874–1960); given to Tom Girtin (1913–94), c.1938; bought by John Baskett on behalf of Paul Mellon (1907–99), 1970; presented to the Center, 1975
Exhibition History
London, 1875, no.99 as 'Trees and Pond near Bromley, Kent ... Drawn and coloured on the spot'; Agnew’s, 1931, no.99; Agnew’s, 1953a, no.42; London, 1962a, no.141; Reading, 1969, no.44; New Haven, 1982, IV.11.; New Haven, 1986a, no.66; London, 2002, no.87
Bibliography
Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.65
Place depicted
Other entries in London and the Home Counties, Together with Miscellaneous Studies and Views

Windsor Castle, from the River Thames
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum

Great Bookham Church, from the East
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill
Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire (National Trust)

The Gateway, St Albans Abbey
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey: The West Porch
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

St Albans Abbey, from the North West
Private Collection

An Interior View of St Albans Abbey, from the Crossing
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

The Interior of St Albans Abbey
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery

Windsor Castle and the Great Park, from the South West
Private Collection, Norfolk

Windsor Great Park: Herne’s Oak with a Herd of Deer
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Stags Fighting amongst a Herd of Deer in Windsor Great Park, with the Castle in the Distance
Private Collection

A Herd of Deer in Richmond Park
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section One: Somerset House to Blackfriars Bridge
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Two: The Surrey Bank
Private Collection

A Panoramic View of the Thames from the Adelphi Terrace, Section Three: Westminster Bridge to York Stairs
Private Collection

Westminster, from the West Corner of the Adelphi Terrace
Private Collection

The Thames with St Paul's and Blackfriars Bridge
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Shipping on the Thames, Looking down Limehouse Reach towards Greenwich, with the Church of St Alfege in the Distance
Private Collection

A Haystack on a Farm, on the Road to Harrow-on-the-Hill
Private Collection

A Panoramic Landscape, near Norwood
Private Collection

Westminster Abbey, Seen from Green Park and the Queen's Basin
National Gallery of Art, Washington

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

St Paul's Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Untraced Works

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from St Martin’s-le-Grand
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A River Scene, with Boats
Victoria and Albert Museum, London

An Imaginary Coast Scene with the Horizontal Air Mill at Battersea
Private Collection

London: The Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

London: The Interior of the Ruins of the Leathersellers’ Hall
British Museum, London

Turver’s Farm, Radwinter
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Farm with an Unidentified Windmill
Private Collection

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence

Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Private Collection, Norfolk

Trees and Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
Private Collection

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone-next-Dartford
British Museum, London

A Farmhouse in a Woodland Setting, Said to Be in Devon
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

Farm Buildings, Probably in Surrey
The Whitworth, The University of Manchester

Tintern Village, Seen across the Forge Pond, Formerly Known as ‘The Mill-Pond’
Private Collection

A Picturesque House Overlooking a River, with Distant Windmills
Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, Bloomington

The West End of an Unidentified Church
Private Collection

Effingham Churchyard, Formerly Known as 'A Country Churchyard'
Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge

An Unidentified Windmill, Probably in Lambeth
Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, Houston

Unidentified Buildings, Herne Hill
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

Study of a Sailor on Board a Ship; A Fishing Boat
Private Collection

The Frozen Watermill, from William Cowper's The Task
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

An Unidentified Subject, Probably from James Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian
Tate, London

The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

The Archangel Gabriel Awaiting Night, from John Milton's Paradise Lost
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Study of a Woman Reading; A Slight Study of a Seated Woman
Private Collection

Portrait Study of a Man, Said to Be the Artist George Barret the Younger
Private Collection

A Study of a Lion from the Tower of London
Private Collection

An Open Field with a Cart and Horses, Known as ‘The Carter’
British Museum, London

A Church Seen across Fields, with Another Sketch Depicting a Woman
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino

A Landscape with Figures by Railings
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Self-Portrait of the Artist at Work
British Museum, London

An Unidentified Landscape, with a Church amongst Trees
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

A Cottage and a Windmill Surrounded by Trees
Private Collection

St Paul’s Cathedral, from the Thames
Private Collection

The Head of a Youth, Here Identified as Joseph Mallord William Turner
Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Old London Bridge, with the Shot Tower in Construction, and St Olave's Church
Private Collection
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About this Work
This rather faded watercolour has consistently been described as an on-the-spot colour sketch on the basis of an inscription on the back of an old mount, which reads ‘Colored from Nature Girtin’. This has not been preserved, however, and because it is unlikely to have been written by the artist himself, there is no reason to believe that the author had any more knowledge of the work’s status than can be gleaned from the drawing itself, and the claim at best seems speculative. Thus, although the drawing displays some of the spontaneity of sketches worked up on the spot, such as A Mountain View, near Beddgelert (TG1321), and the washes used for the reflections in the water are rapidly worked enough to have persuaded me in 2002 that it was ‘Colored from Nature’, now I am not so sure (Smith, 2002b, p.113). The density of the colouring, which means that the majority of the area of the watercolour is covered in multiple layers of wash, with no parts of the sheet left unfinished, is more redolent of a studio work. This is substantiated by comparisons with another local view, A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore (TG1422), which appears to have been used as the basis for a finished studio watercolour and therefore has an altogether stronger case to be considered as an on-the-spot sketch. My change of mind about the work’s status has partly come about from a growing appreciation of the effect of fading on Girtin’s works. In this case, what must have been a complex sky has lost much of its impact, and the foliage has flattened out so that it appears much more sketch-like than originally was the case. The latter feature was interpreted by Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak as evidence of the influence of the work of the amateur artist Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), but I now think that it masks the fact that the effect of the dense vegetation was created by up to three layers of wash, which is incompatible with working on the spot, since it would have required periods of time to allow each application to dry (Girtin and Loshak, 1954, p.65). The signature to the right, which must have originally strayed onto a missing mount, is another factor that led to my change of mind. The telling point, however, is that continuing uncertainty about the status of the work actually illustrates one of the most characteristic and radical aspects of Girtin’s work: namely, the manner in which the artist wilfully obscured the boundaries between the sketch and the finished watercolour.
I am also not sure that the second part of the inscription, which identifies the location of the tree-lined pond as Bromley in Kent, is any more convincing. There is a series of works that have been linked with various degrees of certainty with the area south of London. Much of this seems to have occurred because Bromley Hill was the location of the home of the artist’s best-known pupil, Amelia Long, Lady Farnborough (1772–1837), who made the area the subject of many of her own watercolours, inspired by her teacher’s style. However, Amelia and her husband, Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough (1760–1838), did not move to their estate until 1801, and, given that none of the landscapes associated with the area appear to date from that late, there must be a question mark about the titles of works such as Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley (TG1418). In the case of this work, the form of the distant hill beyond the trees seems more akin to a northern scene than what might be seen in the Home Counties, and the subject of the deeply enclosed view of nature is actually reminiscent of Plumpton Rocks (TG1553) or one of Girtin’s views along the river Wharfe (TG1554). For that reason, whilst I have changed my mind about the status of the work, my original thought about a date for it and the related views – around 1798–99 – still feels about right.
(?) 1798
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
TG1321
1798 - 1799
A Sandpit, near Logs Hill, Widmore
TG1422
1799 - 1800
Barns and a Pond, Said to Be near Bromley
TG1418
1800 - 1801
Plumpton Rocks, near Knaresborough
TG1553
1800 - 1801
On the River Wharfe at Bolton Abbey
TG1554