International studio (58.1916)

A Girtin Collection


“ PONT DE LA TOURNELLE AND NOTRE DAME ”

INDIAN INK DRAWING BY THOMAS GIRTIN

own, because he gets, as they do, luminosity and
strength by using only two or three subdued
colours to represent the many tones and tints he
saw in nature, and which were just those required
for pictorial expression ; everything else he omitted
that did not suit his purpose.
A careful study of the collection from which
these illustrations are chosen clearly shows that
the chief characteristics of Girtin’s art are poetry,
breadth, and simplicity. He, like Rembrandt,
rejected from his subject everything that was petty

or superfluous. He tried to grasp the larger
truths of nature, and succeeded. Girtin was at
once a poet of sunshine and shadow, choosing by
preference those effects of light which were soft
and diffused, and which divided the subject into
broad masses of colour and tone. Always careless
for the most part as to choice of subject, he
accepted it as'it came, and as a thing whose nature
and beauty were to be revealed. But he never
treated and altered it, as Turner did. Girtin
invariably surrendered himself to his subject, and


“ CARNARVON CASTLE ”
2l8


BY THOMAS GIRTIN