Thomas Girtin was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 and etcher. A friend and rival of J. M. W. Turner

J. M. W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...

, Girtin played a key role in establishing watercolour as a reputable art form.

Biography

Thomas Girtin was born in Southwark

Southwark

Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...

, London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, the son of a well-to-do brushmaker of Huguenot

Huguenot

The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

 descent. His father died while Thomas was a child, and the widow married a Mr.Vaughan, a pattern-draughtsman

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

. Girtin learnt drawing

Drawing

Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...

 as a boy (attending classes with Thomas Malton

Thomas Malton

Thomas Malton , "the younger", was an English painter of topographical and architectural views, and an engraver. J M W Turner and Thomas Girtin were amongst his pupils...

), and was apprenticed

Apprenticeship

Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...

 to Edward Dayes

Edward Dayes

Edward Dayes was an English watercolour painter and engraver in mezzotint.-Life:He studied under William Pether, and began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1786, sending views of Waltham and Canterbury; in the three following years he exhibited miniatures as well as landscapes...

 (1763-1804), a topographical watercolourist. He is believed to have served out his seven year term, although there are unconfirmed reports of clashes between master and apprentice, and even that Dayes had Girtin imprisoned as a refractory apprentice. Certainly Dayes did not fully appreciate his pupil's talent, and he was to write dismissively of Girtin after his death.

While still a youth, Girtin became friends with J. M. W. Turner

J. M. W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...

 and the two teenagers were employed to colour prints

Old master print

An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition . A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term. The main techniques concerned are woodcut, engraving and etching, although there are...

 with watercolour. Girtin exhibited at the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 from 1794. His architectural

Architecture

Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

 and topographical sketches and drawings soon established his reputation, his use of watercolour for landscape

Landscape art

Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...

s being such as to give him the credit of having created Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 watercolour painting. He went on several sketching tours, visiting the north of England, North Wales and the West Country. By 1799, he had acquired influential patrons such as Lady Sutherland

Earl of Sutherland

Earl of Sutherland is a title in the Peerage of Scotland. It was created circa 1230 for William de Moravia. The Earl of Sutherland is also the Chief of Clan Sutherland...

, and the art collector Sir George Beaumont. He was the dominant member of the Brothers, a sketching society of professional artists and talented amateurs.

In 1800, Girtin married Mary Ann Borrett, the sixteen year old daughter of a well-to-do City

City of London

The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...

 goldsmith, and set up home in St George's Row, Hyde Park, next door to the painter Paul Sandby

Paul Sandby

Paul Sandby was an English map-maker turned landscape painter in watercolours, who, along with his older brother Thomas, became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768.-Life and work:...

. By 1801, he was a welcome houseguest at his patrons' country houses such as Harewood House

Harewood House

Harewood House is a country house located in Harewood , near Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It is a member of Treasure Houses of England, a marketing consortium for nine of the foremost stately homes in England...

 and Mulgrave Castle, and was able to charge 20 guineas for a painting, but his health was deteriorating. In late 1801 to early 1802, he spent five and a half months in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, where he painted watercolours and made a series the pencil sketches which he engraved on his return to London. They were published as Twenty Views in Paris and its Environs after his death. In the spring and summer of 1802, Girtin produced a panorama of London, the "Eidometropolis", 18 feet high and 108 feet in circumference which was exhibited with success that year. It was notable for its naturalistic treatment of urban light and atmosphere. That November, Girtin died in his painting room; the cause was variously reported as asthma or "ossification of the heart."

Girtin's early landscapes are akin to 18th-century topographical sketches, but in later years he developed a bolder, more spacious, Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 style, which had a lasting influence on English painting. The scenery of the North encouraged him to create a new watercolour palette of warm browns, slate greys, indigo and purple. He abandoned the practice of undershadowing in grey wash and then adding pastel patches of colour, in favour of broad washes of strong colour, and experimented with the use of pen, brown ink and varnish to add richer tones. Girtin's early death reportedly caused Turner to remark, "Had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved".

Exhibitions and retrospectives

The British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

  and the Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

 have collections of his work.

In July 2002 Tate Britain

Tate Britain

Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...

 organised an exhibition, Thomas Girtin: The Art of Watercolour with the aim to "reveal his technical genius".

External links

• The 261 works of Girtin (or Girtin/Turner) at Tate Britain
  Tate Britain
  Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
  
  
• 25 paintings at Museum Syndicate