Thomas Girtin (1775–1802): An Online Catalogue, Archive and Introduction to the Artist

I will begin by outlining the scope at the outset of a major project to produce an online catalogue covering the drawings, watercolours and prints by, and after, the short lived but highly productive artist, Thomas Girtin. There are, I suggest, three categories of his works which pose a particular challenge to any cataloguer: the many hundreds of watercolours which he made in collaboration with fellow practitioners; the numerous copies or creative variations that Girtin produced after the works of contemporary artists, both professional and amateur, and after earlier landscape and topographical prints; and, finally, watercolours where the ostensible topographical subject has been lost or effaced as a result of Girtin’s ambitions to transcend the status of his chosen medium. Each of the three categories of problem works pose different challenges which I will explore through a series of case studies before concluding that, despite the new research opportunities opened up by online searches and the mass digitisation of works on paper, a Girtin catalogue must, by necessity, admit a healthy degree of uncertainty and a fluidity at its margins.