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Provenance: Probably William Alexander; Sotheby's, London, 12 March 1817, lot 1199 as 'Sketch of Lichfield Cathedral by T. Girtin'.

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Literature: T. Girtin and D. Loshak, The Art of Thomas Girtin, London, 1954, p. 146.

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Notes: No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 15% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.
The present drawing was executed during Girtin's first sketching tour, in the summer of 1794, around Lichfield, Warwick, Lincoln and Peterborough and resulted in a series of commissions from James Moore, on whose drawings Girtin had based some of his previous watercolours. The full watercolour which derived from this drawing in the Yale Center for British Art and another version is in the Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester (see G. Smith, Thomas Girtin, The Art of Watercolour, London, 2002, p. 60, no. 38, illustrated).

Visit www.christies.com for additional information on this lot. The view from the North West reveals the cathedral's unique three spires. However the west façade had been damaged in the civil war and stripped of its medieval statuary and the replacement seventeenth-century tracery was historically inaccurate. The antiquarian Moore might have wished Lichfield to be painted on account of concerns over the restoration work undertaken by James Wyatt at that time.