Thomas Girtin

Thomas Girtin was a London watercolourist and etcher, a friend and rival of Turner, with whom he copied drawings in the evenings at Dr Thomas Monro’s house. He toured Britain painting castles, abbeys and broad open landscapes, using bold washes on rough paper that helped turn watercolour from tinted drawing into an art of its own. The White House at Chelsea, at Tate Britain, is among his best-known works. He also painted a huge panorama of London, the Eidometropolis, shortly before his death at twenty-seven.