Holy Island is dramatically situated on the coast of Northumbria and is reached at low tide by a track over the sand. This watercolor was likely based on sketches Girtin made during his tour to Scotland and northern England in the summer and early fall of 1796, and probably dates from 1797, when he exhibited ten subjects from the tour at the Royal Academy. Much influenced by J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) and by John Robert Cozens (1752–1797), Girtin imparted a visionary grandeur to the scene. The massive basalt rock, rising above the shore and topped by a sixteenth-century castle, becomes the focus of the composition, overshadowing tiny human figures in the foreground. Relegated to the distant left background are the harbor, fishing village, and church of Saint Mary, with its extensive ruins of a priory and monastery.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island, Northumberland
Artist:Thomas Girtin (British, London 1775–1802 London)
Date:1796–97
Medium:Watercolor
Dimensions:Sheet: 15 in. × 20 1/2 in. (38.1 × 52 cm)
Classification:Drawings
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1906
Accession Number:06.1051.1
Signature: At lower center in pen and brown ink: Girtin
Inscription: On verso at left in pen and reddish-brown ink: Mackenzie
Hopkins (British); Vendor: Palser [J. Palser & Sons or The Palser Gallery] Vendor: Through Roger Eliot Fry (British)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. "Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection," July 29–October 21, 1996.
Tate Britain. "Turner and the Masters," September 23, 2009–January 24, 2010.
Tate Britain, London. "Turner and the Masters," September 23, 2009–January 31, 2010.
Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. "Turner and the Masters," February 22, 2010–May 24, 2010.
Museo Nacional del Prado. "Turner and the Masters," June 22, 2010–September 19, 2010.
Samuel Redgrave, Richard Redgrave A Century of Painters of the English School. 1866, pp. 393-94, 397.
Roger Eliot Fry "Drawings." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 2, no. 12, (December 1907), pp. 201-202.
Thomas Girtin, David Loshak The Art of Thomas Girtin. London, 1954, no. 185, fig. 32, pp. 62-63, 159, ill.
Frederick J. Cummings, Robert Rosenblum, Allen Staley Romantic Art in Britain: Paintings and Drawings, 1760-1860. Exh. cat. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts; Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1968, cat. no. 113, pp. 186-87, ill.
Isabel Combs Steube Through English Eyes: The Geography of Romanticism in British Watercolors, 1760-1860 Ex. pamphlet. The Katonah Gallery, Sept. 16–Oct. 28, 1979, cat. no. 12, pp. 11, 18, ill.
Susan Morris Thomas Girtin, 1775–1802. Ex. cat. Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, 1986, pp. 13, 16.
Glorious Nature: British Landscape Painting 1750-1850. Exh. cat. Denver: Denver Art Museum. Katharine Baetjer, New York: Hudson Hill Press, 1993, cat. no. 46, p. 172, ill.
Greg Smith , et al. Thomas Girtin: The Art of Watercolor. Exh. cat. Tate Britain, London, 2002, fig. no. 1, pp. 13, 82, 123, ill.
Turner and the Masters. Exh. cat., Tate Britain, London, September 23, 2009-January 31, 2010, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, February 22-May 24, 2010, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, June 22-September 19, 2010. David H. Solkin, London, 2009, cat. no. 17, ill.
Greg Smith Thomas Girtin (1775–1802): An Online Catalogue, Archive and Introduction to the Artist. London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022, TG1113, ill.
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