John Thirtle

John Thirtle (baptised 22 June 177730 September 1839) was an English watercolour artist and frame-maker. Born in Norwich, where he lived for most of his life, he was a leading member of the Norwich School of painters.

Much of Thirtle's life is undocumented. After working as an apprentice to a London frame-maker, he returned to Norwich to establish his own frame-making business. During his career he also worked as a drawing-master, a printseller and a looking glass maker. He produced frames for paintings by several members of the Norwich School, including John Crome and John Sell Cotman. Throughout his working life he continued to paint. In 1812 he married Elizabeth Miles, the sister of Cotman's wife Ann. Thirtle suffered from tuberculosis during the last two decades of his life, and his worsening health reduced his artistic output up to his death in 1839. His Manuscript Treatise on Watercolour, unpublished before 1977, was probably for his own use, and he exhibited fewer than 100 paintings. A member of the Norwich Society of Artists, he briefly served as its vice-president, but in 1816 was one of the artists who seceded from the Society to form a separate association, the Norfolk and Norwich Society of Artists, which dissolved after three years.

The majority of Thirtle's watercolours are of Norwich and the surrounding Norfolk countryside, many being riverside scenes. His style, influenced by Thomas Girtin, Crome and (to a lesser extent) Cotman, was technically accomplished. 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. The quality of several of his watercolours has deteriorated owing to the fading of the indigo pigment that he used extensively.

Life Family, early life and apprenticeship

Much of the biographical detail about John Thirtle is undocumented, and little is known of his life. The son of John Thirtle and his wife Susanna Lincoln, he was probably born in a house close to St Saviour's Church, Norwich, and was baptised at that church on 22 June 1777. A sister, Rachel, was baptised on 13 August 1780 and a younger brother named James was baptised in 1785. His parents were well-known members of the local community. His father, who worked in Elephant Yard off Magdalen Street as a bootmaker and an overseer of the poor, was a churchwarden at St Saviour's. Few details are known of Thirtle's boyhood or education.

In 1790, the 13-year-old John was apprenticed to Benjamin Jagger of Norwich, the leading carver, gilder, picture dealer and printmaker in the city. In about 1799 Thirtle moved to London to serve an apprenticeship to make picture frames, possibly under a Mr. Allwood. During this apprenticeship he studied the pictures of John Sell Cotman at Rudolph Ackermann's print shop at 96, The Strand.

Return to Norwich and subsequent career Frame-making business

On the successful completion of his apprenticeship in 1805, Thirtle returned to Norwich, where he showed five paintings at an exhibition of the Norwich Society of Artists, and set himself up to produce picture frames and prints in a shop in Magdalen Street. Afterwards, he rarely left his home city again. 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 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 of painters, despite strong competition from Jeremiah and William Freeman, who dominated the Norwich framing market during this period.

Paintings by members of the Norwich School were framed by Thirtle, including those by Cotman, John Crome, Thomas Lound, James Sillett, and Joseph Stannard. When Thirtle framed George Vincent's oil painting Trowse Meadows, near Norwich (first exhibited in 1828), he made a watercolour version of it. 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.

Thirtle is known to have suffered from tuberculosis for many years. This greatly interfered with his work output, although the art historian Derek 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 Thirtle and his wife can be found in Section E (Reference E759 Sq(uare)). 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 to his wife Elizabeth. She outlived him by many years, dying in 1882 at the age of 95.

Style and technique

John Thirtle exhibited 79 works in Norwich, the majority of which were of the city or the Norfolk countryside. His style was influenced by the English watercolourist Thomas Girtin, as well as fellow members of the Norwich School, such as Crome and Cotman. Thirtle responded to Cotman by producing works that were technically accomplished. Walpole notes that they were produced by "a very independent spirit, answerable to no-one". 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." Thirtle's watercolours can easily be distinguished from those of Cotman and only occasionally show his influence, as with his undated watercolour Old Waterside Cottage, Norwich; he typically did not use the kind of flat washes that Cotman used regularly. The large finished drawing The Boatyard, near The Cow Tower, Norwich (1812) is independent of Cotman's influence and has more naturalism, as it relies to a greater extent on carefully observed light effects.

Although Thirtle attempted to paint in oils, he is known for his watercolours. The Times, announcing an exhibition of works by 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". He surpassed both Crome and Cotman as a watercolourist of outdoor phenomena. 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 (1808), now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

With his later paintings (produced during the period 18141819) he reached his peak, and according to the art historian Margorie Allthorpe-Guyton, his scenes were painted with "limpid, silvery tonality and broad assured washes". He went on to paint with greater brilliancy of colour, producing works that included angular block forms. Clifford praised Thirtle's ability to organise his subjects harmoniously in an unforced and unselfconscious way, but noted how he was less able than Crome to "give the impression of an unaffected, unselected chunk of nature". Hemingway, who describes Thirtle as "an outstanding if variable" watercolour artist to be ranked alongside De Wint and Joshua Cristall, describes Thirtle's ability to create the feeling of space as "exceptional". 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.

Thirtle's Manuscript Treatise on Watercolour, written no earlier than 1810, is now in the Norwich Castle Museum. It was more a reference manual for his own use than a means of perpetuating his ideas for the future. Nothing written by Thirtle other than his Treatise is known to have survived. The treatise is an important document for art historians that provides documentary evidence of Thirtle's approach to his work as an artist. Allthorpe-Guyton dates it to no earlier than 1810, referring to pigments introduced early in the 19th century, such as purple and brown madder. It consists of an unorganised collection of technical instructions and observations, possibly made from paraphrases of published works such as Ackermann's New Drawing Book (1809). Thirtle's list of pigments is longer than Ackermann's and that given by William Henry Pyne, in his Rudiments of Landscape Drawing (1812). Both Pyne and Thirtle describe the use of indigo and provide schemes for colouring skies, buildings and trees. In the treatise, Thirtle shows his interest in depicting the weather, and his opposition towards contemporary ideas of painting in a picturesque way. It contains what Hemingway describes as "undertones of a classical aesthetic", also to be found in John Berney Crome's lecture Painting and Poetry.

Use of indigo

Thirtle used a natural indigo pigment for producing fine greys, obtained from indigofera tinctoria, a species of the bean family. He may have used a cheap form of indigo sold by a local dealer in Norwich. Those watercolours where the pigment was used have deteriorated because the pigment faded to red when exposed to light. This 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 sometimes incorrectly attributed to 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. A section in Thirtle's treatise describes how he used indigo when painting his skies, without any mention of its fading effect:

Legacy

Thirtle was praised in the local press for his work, but was criticised for not exhibiting his works more regularly. During the second half of the 19th century, he lapsed into obscurity, which Allthorpe-Guyton attributes to his lack of success in becoming better known outside Norwich.

An exhibition of Thirtle's paintings was first held by the Norwich Art Circle in 1886. To celebrate the centenary of his death, some of his works were shown in an exhibition in Norwich Castle in 1939, but it was forced to close because of the outset of the Second World War.

A biennial show of paintings by Thirtle and his contemporaries was held in Norwich Castle in 1977; his treatise on watercolour painting was published for the first time in the accompanying exhibition catalogue.

Gallery