Post 194 -by Gautam Shah
SUNDAY feature on ART of Architecture
Thomas Girtin (1775-1802) was an English watercolourist. His architectural sketches and drawings transformed the art of watercolour from meticulously executed renderings to drawings with bold colours. This had a lasting influence on English painting.
Girtin's early landscapes are in, 18th C romantic style. He established his reputation with precise depictions of abbeys, castles, and ruined cathedrals. But soon he developed a bolder, more spacious style. He created a new palette of warm browns, slate greys, indigo and purple. He also abandoned the practice of under-shadowing in a grey wash and then adding pastel patches of colour. He favoured of broad washes of strong colour, and added pen, brown ink and varnish to add richer tones.
Girtin was born in London in 1775, the same year as his friend, J.M.W. Turner, and died in 1802, at the age of twenty-seven. Girtin's early death reportedly caused Turner to remark, ‘Had Tom Girtin lived I should have starved.’
In spring and summer, just before his death in 1802, Girtin produced a panorama of London, the ‘Eidometropolis, 18 x 108 feet in circumference. It was notable for its naturalistic treatment of urban light and atmosphere.
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