This view of Windsor Castle, taken from the west 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 Cozens watercolour was also copied by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) (see figure 1), and in fact, in terms of scale and details such as the herd of deer in the foreground, Turner’s is the closer of the two to the original. The watercolour copy, 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’, though that suggestion has since been dropped from the online catalogue (Oppé, 1950, p.38). If there is a link with Girtin, the copy would have to date, on stylistic grounds, from before the artist came into contact with the work of Cozens at the home of Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), in the years between 1794 and 1797. However, the connection with Girtin amounts to little more than a superficially similar economy of means, which comes over in this watercolour copy as vacuous and spatially unconvincing – with, for example, the vegetation in the foreground and beyond failing to resolve itself in any meaningful way. Whilst it might be possible to reconcile some of the crudely simplified forms of the vegetation with the work of the young apprentice Girtin of around 1791–92 and works such as Eton College, from the River (TG0013), it is difficult, if not impossible, to see how he might have gained access to a Cozens watercolour at this date. I suspect, therefore, that the watercolour is a copy by an unknown amateur artist of the mid-1790s, perhaps even of the Turner copy, and that the slight stylistic parallels with Girtin’s earliest manner are fortuitous.

No doubt one of the reasons this work has been associated with Girtin in the past is because of the similarity of the view with 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 a claim to having been made from a sketch that Girtin himself made on the spot.

1790

Eton College, from the River

TG0013

1797 - 1798

Windsor Park and Castle, from Snow Hill

TG0907

1797 - 1798

Windsor Castle and the Great Park, from the South West

TG1369