Thomas Girtin was the exact contemporary of Joseph Mallord William Turner. Born the same year, they were both prepared in the eighteenth-century topographical tradition, and Girtin was apprenticed to Edward Dayes in 1789 for a few years, having several duties to perform in his teacher’s workshop, including adding watercolor washes to his master’s prints. In the mid-1790s, both Girtin and Turner worked for the well-off linen draper, antiquarian, and amateur artist James Moore, producing watercolors after Moore’s sketches, mainly from his travels.¹ Girtin first debuted his work at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1794, and from then until 1797 Girtin and Turner sketched in the evenings at the informal Monro Academy of Arts, founded by their shared patron, the physician Dr. Thomas Monro.² Early in the careers of Girtin and Turner, they exchanged the tinted drawing tradition for the medium of watercolor due to its expressiveness and atmospheric effects. Girtin went on sketching tours in England, first with James Moore in 1794 and then independently between 1796 and 1799 to other regions in England, including Scotland and Wales, selling his watercolors to eager collectors. In 1799 Girtin founded the Sketching Society, called “The Brothers,” who “met for the purpose of establishing by practice a school of Historic Landscape” and creating landscape compositions based on passages from Romantic landscape poetry.³ In late 1801 to early 1802, he traveled to Paris in hopes of improving his health and painted watercolors and produced sketches in graphite. Shortly before dying at the age of twenty-seven, he exhibited in 1802 his massive panorama of London, Eidometropolis, and his Parisian drawings were posthumously published in an engraved series, Twenty Views in Paris and Its Environs. Turner, who lived until 1851, apocryphally stated, “Had Tom Girtin lived, I would have starved.”

 
Rochester Castle from the River Medway depicts Rochester Castle, the Bridge Chapel and Chamber, and the medieval Rochester Bridge crossing the Medway River in Kent, east of London. The viewpoint is from the other side of the river, looking toward the bridge and the imposing castle. Fishermen in small boats dock next to the riverbank, and a tall wooden mill building with a stone foundation sits on Strood Wharf.⁴ This watercolor advances our understanding of Girtin’s exceptional talent by the age of sixteen. Dating from about 1791–92, it joins a small group of large-scale compositions that Girtin produced only a few years into his apprenticeship with Edward Dayes. It reflects Dayes’s teaching, as noted in his writing on watercolor practice.⁵ Dayes understood which pigments were most steadfast, and he passed this knowledge on to Girtin. Girtin’s adoption of Dayes’s palette is seen here in the relatively limited color palette of blues, grays, browns, and ochres.⁶ Yet Girtin’s treatment of light and shade and his subtle color treatment indicate that he was beginning to interpret the landscape, moving past the strictly topographic tradition. The artist’s handling of the water and the sky makes this evident. The low vantage point emphasizes the castle’s massive structure. It is bathed in light, contrasting with the darkened Strood tide mill on the wharf. The sky is composed of bare paper, gray washes, and small areas of blue. Streaming sunlight invigorates the stonework of the castle and bridge. Girtin’s application of watercolor for the river also displays his mastery, with horizontal bands of darker wash running over a lighter base, creating a mosaic effect, while other complex areas display patterns of reflected light.

 
This composition can be compared to two other large-scale watercolors by Girtin focusing on architectural structures, inscribed 1790—Eton College from Datchet Road (fig. 27.1) and Durham Cathedral and Castle.⁷ For these compositions and Rochester Castle from the River Wegway, Girtin probably based his views on drawings by Dayes, since, as a young apprentice, he was unable to travel to those locations. Dayes’s drawings of Durham Cathedral from the late 1780s were resources for Girtin’s portrayal, but comparable sketches by Dayes have not yet been found for Eton College from Datchet Road. Girtin made four watercolors of Rochester in 1791–92, and he most likely used Dayes’s topographical sketches from his travels there in the late 1780s as the basis for these compositions.⁸ The other early compositions by Girtin are less painterly than this view of Rochester, which is a striking precursor to Girtin’s mature watercolors. As Greg Smith suggests, these works by Girtin were not “simple studio exercises”; by 1791 Dayes had sent watercolors by the young Girtin to the London auction house of Thomas Greenwood, including Rochester Castle from the River Medway for the auction of January 24–25, 1792, as “Drawings, Framed and Glazed.” This exquisite watercolor with its added wash-line mount would have enticed collectors.⁹ —Dena M. Woodall