Thomas GIRTIN

Datable to around 1800, this fine watercolour is one of a group of four large, finished views of the Chalfont estate in Buckinghamshire, commissioned from Thomas Girtin by its owner Thomas Hibbert (1744-1819). Hibbert had the artist produce two views of his seat at Chalfont House, which had been recently remodelled, as well as a pair of views of the newly-built Chalfont Lodge on the estate. The first two watercolours, depicting Chalfont House from the Northeast, with Fishermen Netting the Broadwater and Chalfont House from the Northwest, are both in a private collection in Herefordshire, while the pendant to the present sheet, depicting The South Front of Chalfont Lodge, is today in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. 

A wealthy merchant who established a successful West Indies trading firm as a slaveowner in Jamaica before returning to England in 1780, Thomas Hibbert acquired the Chalfont estate in 1791. Designed by John Chute for Col. Charles Churchill in 1755, Chalfont House had been built in the Gothic Revival manner that Chute had earlier employed for Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill. By the 1790s this style may have seemed somewhat old-fashioned, and in 1799 Hibbert commissioned the architect John Nash to remodel Chalfont House. At the same time he had Nash’s colleague, the landscape designer Humphry Repton, adapt the grounds around the house, which had originally been designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. As an account of Chalfont, published in 1812, noted, ‘The great characteristic feature of the place itself, and of the surrounding country, is repose…the land, the water, the trees, and, indeed, the general system of the view, seem to partake of that placidity which is equally favourable to health and contemplation…and, we may add, from the picturesque embellishments with which it is surrounded, the progress also of plantation and cultivation, rendered extremely valuable; as both ART and NATURE seem now to have combined to encircle an elegant retreat with beautiful scenery, and consequently to form a perfect whole.’ After the remodelling of the house and grounds had been completed, Girtin was commissioned by Hibbert to record the appearance of the estate. His four watercolours of Chalfont, each measuring about 420 x 550 mm., are among his largest works, and were almost certainly intended to be framed and displayed together at Chalfont House.

The present sheet, drawn on Girtin’s preferred heavy cartridge paper and in remarkably fine and fresh condition, depicts Chalfont Lodge, a Gothic cottage built by John Nash around 1799 for Thomas Hibbert’s younger brother Robert. Since demolished, Chalfont Lodge was situated atop a hill several hundred metres to the northeast of the main house and was built to harmonize with the existing landscape of the estate, with its own ornamental lake and kitchen garden. Robert Hibbert lived at Chalfont Lodge until 1819, when he inherited the estate upon the death of his elder brother Thomas that year. As noted above, Girtin painted a pendant view of the south front of the Lodge, which is now in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. He also painted a smaller watercolour of The South Front of Chalfont Lodge, probably commissioned by Robert Hibbert, which is today is in the Paul Mellon collection at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven.

All four large watercolours painted by Girtin for Thomas Hibbert remained together in the Hibbert family collection until 1909, when the present sheet, together with its pendant now in Birmingham, was sold at auction in London. The following year, this watercolour of The North Front of Chalfont Lodge was acquired by the eminent Leeds surgeon Harry Littlewood (1861-1921). It remained with Littlewood’s descendants, almost completely unknown to scholars, for over a century. Previously only known from an old black and white photograph, the present sheet is a superb addition to Girtin’s extant oeuvre as a painter of country houses.