drawing
- Museum number
- 1889,0603.256
- Description
-
Distant view of Jedburgh; view looking down over town with abbey to right, hills in distance. 1796
Graphite
- Production date
- 1796
- Dimensions
-
Height: 115 millimetres
-
Width: 325 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Jedburgh was one of a small group of Scottish towns and villages Girtin included in his tour to Northumberland and the borders in the autumn of 1796, together with Kelso, and, possibly, Melrose. He did not visit Jedburgh again, but the drawings he made continued to furnish subjects for watercolours for the remainder of his career.
From the vantage point of Castle Hill, Girtin was able to take in the abbey, the village and the distant landscape to the north. A watercolour based on the drawing , which includes the full extent of the composition, has been dated to around 1797-8 on stylistic grounds (G&L 166ii; Tate 2002, cat.41). The same drawing was also the basis for a larger watercolour, dated 1800, concentrating on the main street, and excluding the abbey to the right (G&L 355; National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh; Tate 2002, cat. 162). Girtins viewpoint of 1796 was unusual by the standards of recent antiquarian topography, in standing back from the ruin itself, and showing it in relation to the village which had grown up beside it. In the work of 1800, he went one stage further, not only displacing the ruin, but omitting it altogether; he then made the rows of nondescript houses a sufficient subject in themselves, set off against an atmospheric view of the river and distant hills. The first owner of this work also purchased a view of the abbey itself, but the two works are different in size, and unlikely to have been conceived as a pair (see Tate 2002, cat. 170).
A pencil sketch of a distant view of the abbey, drawn at the same time as 1889-6-3-256, is at Yale (G&L 165i, 1975.3.1180; Morris, cat. 43); a watercolour based on the drawing is in the Fitzwilliam Museum., Cambridge, dated 1801 (G&L 165ii; ; J.Munro, British landscape watercolours 1750-1850, 1994, p. 60).
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1988 May-July, Nottingham, Castle Museum, Arts Festival Exh, (no cat.)
1989 April-June, Edinburgh, NG Scotland, 'View of Jedburgh', (no cat.)
- Acquisition date
- 1889
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1889,0603.256