Thomas Girtin

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Girtin, Thomas (b London, 18 Feb. 1775; d London, 9 Nov. 1802). English painter and printmaker, one of the supreme masters of the watercolour landscape. His earlier works were tinted drawings in the 18th-century topographical tradition, but by the end of his short life he had developed a technique that revolutionized watercolour painting. He used strong colour in broad washes, influenced to some extent by J. R. Cozens but going beyond him in the boldness of his compositions, the grandeur with which he created effects of space, and the power with which he suggested mood. His work stands at the beginning of the classic English tradition of watercolour painting, freed from its dependence on line drawing, and Turner acknowledged his friend's greatness with the words ‘If Tom Girtin had lived, I should have starved.’ Girtin made tours in various parts of Britain, and spent six months in Paris in 1801–2, making a series of etchings of the city that were posthumously published in 1803. In 1802 he exhibited an enormous panorama of London, painted in oils or distemper—the Eidometropolis-; this is no longer extant, but sketches for it survive. He died of tuberculosis.

Girtin, Thomas (1775–1802). English painter and printmaker, one of the supreme masters of the watercolour landscape. His earlier works were tinted drawings in the 18th-century topographical tradition, but by the end of his short life he had developed a technique that revolutionized watercolour painting. He used strong colour in broad washes, influenced to some extent by J. R. Cozens, but going beyond him in the boldness of his compositions, the grandeur with which he created effects of space, and the power with which he suggested mood. His work stands at the beginning of the classic English tradition of watercolour painting, freed from its dependence on line drawing, and Turner acknowledged his friend's greatness with the words ‘If Tom Girtin had lived, I should have starved.’ Girtin made tours in various parts of Britain, and spent six months in Paris in 1801–2, making a series of etchings of the city that were posthumously published in 1803. In 1802 he exhibited an enormous panorama of London, painted in oils, the Eidometropolis; this is no longer extant, but sketches for it survive. He died of tuberculosis.

Thomas Girtin , 1775-1802, English draftsman and watercolorist. He was apprenticed to an engraver but was employed, together with J. M. W. Turner, to make topographical drawings. Girtin was among the first to paint naturalistically in watercolor, abandoning the tinted drawing for a direct painting technique, using broad, strong areas of color. In this technique he radically influenced English landscape painting and anticipated the 19th-century watercolor. Characteristic among his drawings are Tynemouth, View on the Wharf, and Kirkstall Abbey (Victoria and Albert Mus.).

Bibliography: See study by T. Girtin and D. Loshak (1954).