Thomas Girtin

Thomas Girtin grew up in London as the son of a wealthy family of craftsmen. When his biological father died, his mother married a pattern draughtsman, who trained young Thomas with a watercolour painter, where he coloured prints with watercolours. It is to Girtin's credit that watercolour was able to establish itself as a respected art form alongside oil painting. He is one of the most famous landscape watercolourists in England.

Already as a young man Girtin got to know his long-time friend, the painter J. M. W. Turner, with whom he attended an evening academy under the direction of his patron Thomas Monro. There they made prints of landscapes and topographic sketches. Turner and Girtin quickly recognized the manifold possibilities of watercolors. Girtin traveled through England North and Wales and made romantic landscape paintings. During this time she created impressive drawings such as "Findlater Castle, Banff", "Lichfield Cathedral", "Interior of Tintern Abbey" or "Stonehenge during a thunderstorm".

Between 1801 and 1802 Girtin spent five months in Paris and made several pencil sketches there, which he reworked into engravings on his return to London. Shortly before his untimely death at the age of 27 from asthma, Girtin completed the large-format panoramic painting Eidometropolis of the city of London, of which only preliminary sketches in the British Museum in London remain today.