Thomas Girtin Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Thomas Gritin as a youth, served his apprenticeship in London as a mezzotint engraver employed to color prints with watercolors under Edward Dayes, through whom he made the acquaintance of J.M.W. Turner who, being shown Gritin's architectural and topographical sketches, encouraged him to develop his talents as a landscape painter.

His early death in 1802 from tuberculosis brought a very promising career to an untimely end, but even by then he had established a high reputation as an etcher. Girtin's early death reportedly caused Turner to remark, "Had Thomas  Girtin lived I should have starved".

Hitherto, watercolors had been used almost entirely for tinting engravings, but to Thomas Gritin goes the credit for establishing Romantic watercolor painting as a major art form in its own right.

From 1794 onward he exhibited his great watercolor landscapes at the annual Royal Academy exhibitions and this helped to develop the fashion for this medium from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Thomas Girtin collaborated with Turner in making a series of copies of architectural paintings for Dr. Monro, notably, works by Canaletto.

Art Movement History: Romanticism.
Artists Influencing Thomas Girtin: Edward Dayes, JMW Turner.
He Traveled To France.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.