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Lot Essay
The present watercolour shows the landscape above Lyme Regis, Dorset from Marshwood Vale, with a distant glimpse of the sea beyond. The relatively unusual long format and elevated viewpoint does much to emphasise the open nature of the landscape of the area and is reminiscent of the work of Dutch seventeenth century artists such as Phillips Koninck (1619-1678) and Antoine Waterloo (1609-1690).
Girtin spent the summer of 1797 travelling through the South West of England making numerous sketches and studies which formed the basis for more highly finished studio watercolours and the following year, amongst his nine Royal Academy submissions were four subjects from this tour.
There is a related watercolour showing the same scene on a similar size sheet, but from an almost opposite viewpoint in the National Gallery or Art, Canada. A watercolour of the coast is in the Yale Center for British Art and a view of Berry Pomeroy was sold in these Rooms, 20 November 2013, lot 273. Greg Smith has suggested that these could have been commissioned by a local patron (G. Smith, op. cit., London, 2002, p. 146).
Girtin spent the summer of 1797 travelling through the South West of England making numerous sketches and studies which formed the basis for more highly finished studio watercolours and the following year, amongst his nine Royal Academy submissions were four subjects from this tour.
There is a related watercolour showing the same scene on a similar size sheet, but from an almost opposite viewpoint in the National Gallery or Art, Canada. A watercolour of the coast is in the Yale Center for British Art and a view of Berry Pomeroy was sold in these Rooms, 20 November 2013, lot 273. Greg Smith has suggested that these could have been commissioned by a local patron (G. Smith, op. cit., London, 2002, p. 146).