This view of Windsor Castle, taken from Snow Hill looking across the Great Park, is a copy on a reduced scale of a watercolour by John Robert Cozens (1752–97), now in the collection of the Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford (see the source image above). The copyist has followed the composition very closely, though overlaying images of the two works shows that the smaller drawing has also been compressed laterally. The Cozens watercolour was also copied by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) (see figure 1), and his version, in contrast, replicates not only the details but also the size of the composition so much so that one could imagine it had been traced from the original. This smaller watercolour copy, now in the Royal Collection, was also once attributed to Turner. However, by the time of the publication of his catalogue of the British drawings at Windsor Castle, it was described by Paul Oppé (1878–1957) as ‘J. R. Cozens, After … conceivably by Girtin’ (Oppé, 1950, p.38) and though Thomas Girtin (1874–1960) and David Loshak did not include the work in their catalogue of his drawings they did acknowledge his authorship of another version of a Cozens watercolour, London, from Greenwich Hill (TG0862). Both are clearly made from a Cozens watercolour rather than an outline drawing and the result is very different to a characteristic Monro school collaboration between Turner and Girtin such as Windsor Castle and Park with Deer (TG0163) which is essentially monochrome. It is likely that both the Windsor and Greenwich copies are by the same artist and that their contrasting predominant tones can be ascribed to the use of different papers and to a varying exposure to light, but was Girtin their author and what might have been his motive in producing such copies? In the case of the latter question, it is perhaps significant that both Cozens’ compositions date from the end of his working life as what was described to Joseph Farington as ‘a total deprivation of nervous faculty’ left him ‘incapacitated’ (Farington, Diary, 23 February 1794). It is not inconceivable, therefore, that both the Windsor views and the Greenwich scene were produced to fulfil orders that Cozens was unable to execute himself and given that he was now under the care of Girtin and Turner’s long standing patron, Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), this might explain how the artists got access to the original watercolours.¹ With this in mind, I am now happy to accept the attribution of both the Windsor and Greenwich copies to Girtin and to ascribe a date of 1794–95 to both works.

No doubt one of the reasons this work has been associated with Girtin in the past is because of its similarity to another Windsor watercolour, Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill (TG0907). Unlike this work, the later and smaller watercolour, which appears to form a pair with another view of the castle, from the south west (TG1369), has at least a reasonable claim to having been made from a sketch that Girtin himself drew on the spot.

1794 - 1795

London, from Greenwich Hill

TG0862

1794 - 1797

TG0163

1797 - 1798

Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill

TG0907

1797 - 1798

Windsor Castle and the Great Park, from the South West

TG1369