Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island, Northumberland

Girtin painted this watercolor of Lindisfarne Castle in 1796 or 1797, during a tour of northern England. He was 21 or 22, already producing some of the most ambitious watercolors of his generation, and he had two years left to live before tuberculosis killed him at 27. Lindisfarne Castle sits on a rocky outcrop on Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland. It was a Tudor fort, built in the 1570s to defend against Scottish raids, and by the 1790s it was a ruin. Girtin painted it from below, looking up at the castle on its crag, the walls catching the last light of an overcast day. The sky fills two-thirds of the sheet, a mass of grey clouds with a break of pale yellow at the horizon. The sea is flat and grey below the castle, with a few boats visible at the left. Girtin was a watercolorist, and he was one of the painters who elevated watercolor from a topographical recording medium to an independent art form. He and his friend J.M.W. Turner were both students at the Royal Academy in the early 1790s, and they sketched together in the countryside around London. Turner went on to a long career and great fame. Girtin died in 1802, and his reputation rests on the watercolors he produced in his last five years, of which this is one. The watercolor is built in washes, with the sky laid in first and the castle and landscape added over it. Girtin used bodycolor, opaque gouache mixed with watercolor, for the highlights on the castle walls and the boats. The surface is smooth, with no visible brushwork, and the colors are muted: greys, browns, and a thin strip of yellow at the horizon. The scale of the sheet is modest, 15 by 20 inches, but the composition has the breadth and seriousness of an oil painting. Watercolor and bodycolor on paper, 38 by 52 centimeters. The sheet has some foxing and fading, visible in the sky, but the castle and the foreground are well preserved. The Met acquired it in 1924 from the McGuire bequest. The muted palette and wide format make this print work well in a study, hallway, or living room with neutral walls. The horizontal format suits a wide wall space above a desk or a sofa. A white frame keeps the watercolor's delicate tones clear. The 11x14 or 12x16 size gives the castle and the sky enough presence to read from across a room. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), scanned from the original at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.