- Description
-
- Creator(s)
- Thomas Girtin (1775-1802)
- Title
-
- Wroxeter: The Roman Wall
- Date
- 1798 - 1799
- Medium and Support
- Graphite, watercolour and gum arabic on laid paper, on an original mount with a single blue line
- Dimensions
- 19.8 × 28.5 cm, 7 ⅞ × 11 ¼ in
- Mount Dimensions
- 28.6 × 37.5 cm, 11 ¼ × 14 ¾ in
- Inscription
‘T. Girtin' lower right, on the original mount, by (?) Thomas Girtin; 'No.170’ lower left, on the original mount
- Object Type
- Studio Watercolour; Work after an Amateur Artist
- Subject Terms
- Ancient Ruins; Shropshire View
-
- Catalogue Number
- TG1353
- Description Source(s)
- Viewed in 2016
Provenance
Guy Bellingham-Smith (1865–1949); D. C. Baskett (1897–1962); Iolo Aneurin Williams (1890–1962); ... Sotheby’s, 20 November 1986, lot 24, £5,500; Martyn Gregory Ltd, 1988; ... Spink & Son Ltd, London, 1996; Sotheby’s, 10 July 1997, lot 71, £26,450; Sotheby’s, New York, 26 January 2011, lot 651, unsold; Christie's, 5 July 2016, lot 99, £52,500; bought by George and Patti White; lent to Harvard Art Museums, 2023
Exhibition History
Martyn Gregory, London, 1988, no.61; Spink’s, London, 1996, no.14
Bibliography
Wright, 2022, pp.77–82
Place depicted
Other entries in The 1798 Welsh Tour:
Sketches and Subsequent Watercolours
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Rhuddlan Castle, from the River Clwyd
Tate, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery
The Eagle Tower, Caernarfon Castle
Private Collection, North Wales
Caernarfon: A Street Scene with Plas Mawr
Tate, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
British Museum, London
Caernarfon Castle, from the River Seiont
Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Birkenhead
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
British Museum, London
The Cain Falls (Pistyll Cain), near Dolgellau
Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery
A Mountain View, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
A Bridge over the Glaslyn, near Beddgelert
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
British Museum, London
Pont Seiont, Looking Towards Mynydd Mawr (Big Mountain)
Private Collection
Pont y Pair, Betws-y-Coed
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake), Looking towards Cadair Idris
Private Collection
A View of Hills and a River, Probably in North Wales
British Museum, London
Denbigh Castle and the Vale of Clwyd
British Museum, London
An Unidentified Landscape, Possibly the Vale of Clwyd
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River; Studies of Seated Figures
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
Valle Crucis Abbey, from the River
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
Valle Crucis Abbey: From the Cloister Looking Towards the Dormitory
Private Collection
Valle Crucis Abbey: The Chapter House, from the South West
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
A River Scene, Probably the Dee near Corwen
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, San Marino
The Cloisters of Chester Cathedral
Private Collection
The Red Castle, from Hawk Lake, with a Distant View of Shrewsbury
Private Collection
Wroxeter: The Roman Wall
Harvard Art Museums / Fogg Museum, Loan from George and Patti White
The Old Severn Bridge at Bridgnorth
British Museum, London
Hereford Cathedral, from across the River Wye
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
The Great Hall, Kenilworth Castle
Private Collection
An Unidentified Valley, Probably in North Wales
Southill Park, Bedfordshire
Cadair Idris, from the Estuary near Barmouth
Private Collection
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About this Work
This modestly scaled watercolour depicts the surviving fragment of a wall in the Roman town of Viroconium, with the church of St Andrew's, Wroxeter framed in the distance. Viroconium was the fourth largest Roman town in Britain, but the remains revealed by the archaeological work that began in 1788 were not spectacular, and Girtin certainly made the most visually of the short length of wall standing alongside the ancient baths. The watercolour adopts a close viewpoint and looks south west from a darkened foreground, and a fragment of the mighty Roman empire is used to frame a sunlit view of an English village in a way that offers the sort of contrast that is found in many of Girtin’s depictions of ruins and that was no doubt calculated to evoke thoughts on the transience of power and wealth. Nevertheless, this seems an unlikely subject for Girtin, whose views of the nation’s historical monuments do not generally include classical remains. Wroxeter, in Shropshire, is near the Welsh border, and it may be that Girtin sketched the view either travelling to or from North Wales in the summer of 1798, but it is hard to believe that the artist’s eye was caught by the scene in passing, and the subject was surely prompted by a patron who had local knowledge and who wished for a view that otherwise had little to recommend it visually.
The identity of that first owner is unfortunately not known, but there is nonetheless some evidence to link the work with one of Girtin’s closest followers, the artist William Pearson (1772–1849). He produced an etching of the same view of Wroxeter (see figure 1) and included it in his book Select Views of the Antiquities of Shropshire (Pearson, 1807, pl.13). The etching is so close to Girtin’s watercolour, down to details such as the same line of shadow falling diagonally across the wall to the right, that, initially at least, I assumed it to be a copy from Girtin’s drawing, and it is easy to imagine that the drawing was commissioned from him for the purpose of producing a print. However, there are enough differences to suggest another option. The foliage seen on the riverbank in the etching, together with the figures and the position of the church viewed through the opening, display slight variations in their form; however, since none of them are improvements on the Girtin drawing, it appears that the two images share the same common source, which the two artists developed in slightly different ways. This may have been an untraced on-the-spot drawing by Girtin himself, but equally, as with so many of his more obscure topographical views, it could be that he worked from a sketch by another artist, possibly even Pearson himself. And this is supported by the recent suggestion that the foreground in both Girtin and Pearson’s views is invented (Wright, 2022, p.79). A pair of watercolours produced by the Revd. Edward Williams in 1788 shows a flat ploughed field extending right up to the wall with no suggestion of a riverbank and the church is placed correctly at a distance. The evidence is hardly overwhelming, but on balance I suspect that both this watercolour and another Shropshire view (TG1352) may not have been the direct outcomes of Girtin’s 1798 trip to Wales after all.
1798 - 1799
The Red Castle, from Hawk Lake, with a Distant View of Shrewsbury
TG1352