Collections: Where to Find Girtin’s Work

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Public Collection in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

The majority of the museum's works by Thomas Girtin came from the collection of Francis Pierrepont Barnard (1854–1931) a great-grandson of the artist. He inherited a group of works by the artist from his mother, Mary Hog Barnard (1829–99), who had acquired them by a family settlement from her father, Thomas Calvert Girtin (1801–74). The bulk of Barnard’s collection was bought around 1912, however, when the substantial group of drawings commissioned from Girtin by the artist’s earliest patron, James Moore (1762–99), was dispersed in a series of private sales. The bequest of this material to the Ashmolean Museum in 1934, along with the works from the family collection, means that the museum’s holdings provide the best introduction to Girtin’s earliest years.

Works in the Collection