'Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter' by Oscar Zarate
Calling Thomas Girtin “the forgotten painter” is true in terms of public acclaim but not in art history. He’s usually mentioned alongside his better-known friend, J.M.W. Tuner, and if the history is more detailed, he’s included in accounts of the period when he painted. Girtin was one in a group of young British painters who chose watercolor as their medium. They worked against opposition from stuffy academics who insisted that oil painting ruled supreme.
But yes, Oscar Zarate’s graphic novel might raise popular appreciation for a fine and gifted artist overlooked in the broadest surveys of 19th century art. Working imaginatively from thin biographical material, Zarate tells a tragic story from the Romantic era of an artist who died for his art. Girtin is depicted as a slightly sickly youth who braved the elements in a quest to capture the sublimity of nature—the wind, the rain—in real time. That he died young, age 27, partly explains his relative obscurity.
Zarate illustrates Girtin’s life in watercolor strokes, wrapping his story inside the fictional lives of three contemporary artists. The trio share the same painting class and argue about the merits of it all, including the relevance of artists such as Girtin. Little surprise that the argument for Girtin is sound. Turner said: “If Tom Girtin had lived, I would have starved.” In that event, Zarate might have produced a graphic novel on Turner: The Forgotten Painter.
