John Thirtle


John Thirtle was an English watercolour artist. Born in Norwich, where he lived for most of his life, Thirtle was a leading member of the Norwich School of painters, whose paintings of Norwich are considered to be outstanding in the history of watercolour painting.
Thirtle was apprenticed to a London frame maker before returning home to Norwich. There he set up a successful frame-making business, whilst continuing to paint as well as working as a drawing-master, a printseller and a looking glass maker. In 1812 he married Elizabeth Miles, the sister-in-law of John Sell Cotman. He suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life, and his worsening health reduced his artistic output up to his death in 1839. He produced relatively little: his unpublished manuscript Treatise on Watercolour was probably for his own use, and he exhibited fewer than a hundred works of art. He was a member of the Norwich Society of Artists and for a time its vice-president, but in 1816 he was one of a number of artists who seceded from the Society to form a separate association, which dissolved after only three years.
The majority of Thirtle's watercolours are of Norwich and the surrounding Norfolk countryside, many being riverside scenes. His style, which was influenced by Thomas Girtin, Crome and John Sell Cotman, was both technically accomplished and individual. His earlier landscapes were painted with a restricted range of buffs, blues and grey-browns, but he later developed a brilliancy of colour, producing works that included angular block forms. Unhappily, the quality of several of his watercolours has deteriorated, due to the fading of a particular indigo pigment that he used extensively and to great effect.

Life

Early life and apprenticeship

The surname Thirtle is a form of Turkle, from Thor-ketil, the sacrificial cauldron for the god Thor. John Thirtle.was the son of John Thirtle and his wife Susanna Lincoln. He was probably born in a house close by to St Saviour's Church, Norwich, and was baptised at the church on 22nd June 1777. A sister, Rachel, was baptised on 13 August 1780 and an older brother named James was baptised in 1785.

Return to Norwich and subsequent career

Frame-making business

On successfully completing his years as an apprentice, Thirtle returned to Norwich and set himself up to produce picture frames and prints in a shop in Magdalen Street. During what appears to have been a mainly uneventful life, he rarely left his home city again. He is recorded as having returned in 1805, when he exhibited five paintings at an exhibition of the Norwich Society of Artists. In 1806, when he had already established himself as a picture framer and gilder in Norwich, he described himself in the Society's catalogue as a "Miniature Painter and Drawing Master". His extensive business activities, and particularly the production of his decorative picture frames, led to his becoming one of the more financially successful members of the Norwich School, despite strong competition from Jeremiah and William Freeman, who dominated the Norwich framing market during this period.
Several of Thirtle's own frames have survived and point to his fine craftmanship. Many paintings by fellow members of the Norwich School were framed by Thirtle's business and bear his name on the frame, including those by John Sell Cotman, John Crome, Thomas Lound, James Sillett and Joseph Stannard. At least one such framed painting, Vincent's Trowse Meadows, near Norwich, an oil on canvas that was first exhibited in 1828, was copied by Thirtle, who produced the same scene as a watercolour. His trade label took several forms, ranging from the early "Thirtle, Miniature Painter, & Drawing Master" to the elaborate "Carver, Gilder, Picture Frame and Looking Glass Manufacturer, Wholesale and Retail", used in the 1830s.
Paintings still in Thirtle's original frames can be dated as being before 1837, the year John Thirtle died. William Boswell, who took over the business that year, initially included "Late Thirtle" in brackets on his labels. In 1922, W. Boswell & Son acknowledged in one of their publications that "Thirtle was a well-known frame maker, and the maker of the now famous swept frame, which has never been equalled, he also was, and still is an artist of no small repute".

Artistic career

Thirtle's earliest known work was The Windmill. This landscape painting seems to have been unusual, as many of his early works were portraits and paintings of other subjects, but by then he had begun to increase his output of landscapes, and to stand out as a master of the genre of watercolour painting. Painted in 1800, The Windmill was catalogued by the Norwich Art Circle in 1886. In 1803 John Crome and Robert Ladbrooke formed the Norwich Society of Artists, a group that also included George Vincent, Charles Hodgson, Daniel Coppin, James Stark and Robert Dixon. Their first exhibition, in 1805, marked the start of the Norwich School of painters, the first British art movement to be created outside London. In the exhibition Thirtle showed five paintings out of the seventy-one exhibited by five artists: Crome, Ladbrooke, Hodgson, Dixon and Thirtle himself.
He was probably a founder member of the Norwich School of Artists, but his membership of the Society was only first recorded three years after it was founded. His exhibited miniatures during the first years of the Society, but afterwards developed to become a landscape artist, notably of scenes of the rivers Yare and Wensum, and of thunderstorms. He served as Vice-President of the Society from 1806 to 1812. His output of exhibited works declined from a peak of seventeen until he exhibited only six works in 1817, and none the year after that, making a total of 97. He exhibited only once outside Norwich, at the Royal Academy in 1808.

Marriage

On 26 October 1812 he married Elizabeth Miles of Felbrigg, whose father was "of some means", and whose sister Ann had married John Sell Cotman three years previously. John and Elizabeth were married at St. Saviour's, the church in Norwich where he had been baptised 35 years previously. The marriage produced a close association with Cotman that influenced Thirtle's artistic style. The two artists probably worked together when Cotman was producing drawings of the interior of Norwich Cathedral in around 1808, as similar drawings by Thirtle from this time have survived. The two Miles sisters were themselves amateur painters, having shown their work at the Norwich Society of Artists exhibition of 1811. There were probably no children produced from the marriage.

Secession from the Norwich Society of Artists

In 1814 Thirtle was elected President of the Society, but he was one of three leading artists to secede from the Society in 1816, to form the Norfolk and Norwich Society of Artists. The secession was caused by a disagreement over how the profits of the exhibitions should be used, and led to Robert Ladbrooke, James Sillett, Joseph Clover, Joseph Stannard and John Thirtle renting part of the Shakespeare Tavern on Theatre Plain and holding their own exhibition, The Twelfth Exhibition of the Norfolk and Norwich Society of Artists, to rival the original Society's exhibition in Sir Benjamin's Wrench's Court.
Thirtle's decline in output from 1806 was reported by the local press, whose disappointment was expressed in 1811: "We lament exceedingly that Mr. Thirtle, who made up the seceding triumvirate, should not have found time for a single drawing. His occupation is doubly to be regretted, because he stands highest and alone in the particular and beautiful department of watercolours in which he has evinced so much decided excellence". Although Thirtle continued to work, he exhibited nothing from 1818 to 1828.
At some time, whilst John Sell Cotman was contributing drawings for the Excursions in the County of Norfolk, Thirtle went to Great Yarmouth to help his brother-in-law, but none of his drawings appeared in the published work, and he probably assisted Cotman by relieving him of his teaching activities.

Later life

It is known that by 1824 Thirtle was taking on pupils: he was employed by Thomas Blofield to instruct his daughter Mary Catherine and he also taught James Pattison Cockburn. Thirtle's mother died in 1823: an inheritance from his father, who died in 1825, may have given him some financial security for the remainder of his life, as 1825 is the first year in which he is known to have independently owned property.
After the dissolution of the Norwich Society of Artists in 1833, its main artists, including Thirtle, continued to be active. He continued to produce picture frames as well as to paint river scenes, reminiscent of the works of Peter De Wint.
He is known to have suffered from tuberculosis, then known as consumption, for many years. This greatly interfered with his work output, although Clifford has commented on the stronger and more freely expressed manner of these later drawings. Thirtle died of tuberculosis in Norwich on 30 September 1839, and was buried in the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich. The tomb-chest of John Thirtle and his wife can be found in Section E. After his death, the framing business was taken over by William Boswell. In Thirtle's short will, made in 1838 and proved in December 1839, he described himself as both a carver and a gilder. He left the sum of £2000 to his wife Elizabeth, a considerable sum of money in those days. She outlived him by many years, dying in 1882 at the age of ninety-five.

Technique

John Thirtle exhibited a total of ninety-seven works in Norwich, and only a handful of his landscapes were not either of the city itself or of the Norfolk countryside. His style was influenced by Thomas Girtin as well as fellow members of the Norwich School, such as John Crome and John Sell Cotman. Thirtle responded to the genius of Cotman, who was his brother-in-law, by producing works that were both technically accomplished and individual. The artist Henry Ladbrooke, who was a contemporary of Thirtle's, wrote: "As a man of genius, Cotman was much Crome's superior and, as a colourist, Thirtle far surpassed them both". His watercolours can easily be distinguished from those of Cotman and only occasionally show his influence, as with his watercolour Old Waterside Cottage, Norwich. Thirtle typically did not use the kind of flat washes that Cotman used regularly.
No letters to or from John Thirtle seem to have been preserved. He wrote a Manuscript Treatise on Watercolour, written no earlier than 1810, which is now in the Norwich Castle Museum, but nothing else written by him has survived. The treatise was more a reference manual for his own use than a means of perpetuating his ideas for the future.
Although he attempted to paint in oils, he is known for his watercolours. The Times, announcing an exhibition of Thirtle and other lesser known members of the Norwich School in July 1886, described him as "a good portrait painter and a charming landscapist in watercolour, his drawings being full of observation and treated with a freedom, breadth and delicacy that are really remarkable". His earlier landscapes, from 1808 to 1813, were painted mainly with a restricted range of buffs, blues and grey-browns, as exemplified by Interior of Binham Abbey, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. With later paintings he reached his peak, and according to the art historian Margarie Allthorpe-Guyton, his scenes were painted with "limpid, silvery tonality and broad assured washes". We went on to paint with greater brilliancy of colour, producing works that included angular block forms. The writer Derek Clifford compared John Crome with Thirtle, describing him as less able to "give the impression of an unaffected, unselected chunck of nature" than Crome, whilst still managing to organise his subjects harmoniously, without them being self-conscious or forced. His pictures of riverside landscapes of Norfolk have a trait that was peculiar to his style - a boat gliding along on the water from the left.

Use of indigo

Thirtle used an indigo pigment for producing fine greys. Those watercolours where the pigment was used have deteriorated because the pigment fades to red when exposed to light. This unfortunate reddening characteristic of his paintings cannot be applied to them all, but it is sometimes assumed that Thirtle's works are all permanently ruined in this way. Equally, the use of indigo by other painters has meant that their works were in the past sometimes incorrectly attributed to John Thirtle.
An example of such a work is his River Scene with laden Wherries and Figures, an undated pencil and watercolour, in which the pink glow of the sky and the sea have been unintentionally caused by the fading away of the original greyish blue colours. The original colours produced by Thirtle can still be seen around the edges of the painting, where there was much less exposure to light.

Legacy

Thirtle's works were collected by Thomas Lound, a prolific water colourist and etcher who was found to have owned seventy of Thirtle's drawings at the time of his own death in 1861. Lound's etching of Devil's Tower - Looking towards Carrow Bridge created a superb rendition in black and white of Thirtle's original watercolour.
The Norwich Art Circle held an exhibition of his paintings in 1886. In 1939, the centenary of his death, an exhibition of his works was held in the Norwich Castle Art Gallery, but it was forced to close prematurely because of the outset of the Second World War. A biennial exhibition of Thirtle's works, along with some of those of his contemporaries, was held at Norwich Castle from 18 June to 4 September 1977, with Thirtle's treatise on watercolour painting being published for the first time in the accompanying exhibition catalogue by Marjorie Allthorpe Guyton.
Under the conditions of the Colman Bequest, when in 1946 thousands of works by artists from the Norwich School were donated to the city by the Colman family, works such as those by Thirtle were not expected to be exhibited outside Norwich. Those of Thirtle's drawings and paintings that formed part of the Colman family's collection and which are now kept in Norwich Castle, held in specially built cabinets, are only rarely shown on to the public in Norwich or elsewhere, but many can be viewed online.

Selected paintings

Books

Exhibition catalogues

List of works