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Girtin toured Yorkshire several times, but Ouse Bridge, York belongs to a tour he made in the summer of 1800. His erstwhile master Dayes had commended the medieval Ouse Bridge as a picturesque subject, given its distant resemblance to the bridges of Venice and thus Canaletto's work. Originally, the bridge spanned six arches and was crowded with shops and houses. A severe flood had destroyed the center of the bridge in 1565, and a single span arch was erected during its reconstruction. While the picturesque form of the Ouse Bridge attracted artists, York's urban reformers considered it a hindrance and were busy demolishing it throughout the eighteenth century. In 1745 and 1764 several houses on the bridge were pulled down, as were all the houses at either end of the bridge between 1793 and 1794. Girtin had painted the bridge twice before, in 1796 and 1797, but by the 1800 tour, he must have known that the days of this venerable structure were numbered. The city had already applied for permission to demolish the old bridge and replace it with a new and more efficient iron construction.
Girtin's view owers something to Cozens in its depth of tone, bnut his coloring is darker than Cozens's, more tawny like tobacco. It is possible that this watercolor would originally have been rather brighter, with more purple coloring, since Girtin regularly used fugitive pigments that quickly faded with age. However, other influences are discernible: a plausible case has been made for the impact of Rembrandt on works by Girtin of this date. Compared to the clarity and brightness Dayes's work, it is little wonder that the latter accused his pupil of washing his colors in dirty water. What Dayes objected to most strongly, however, was what he saw as the intrusion of the artist's personality onto the surface of his work. Dayes's own taste for transparent colors has been shown to mirror his desire to keep his individuality equally transparent, preventing his personality from getting between the scene and the viewer. Girtin rejected this approach in favor of rich surface effects. Through close study of Canaletto's drawings, Girtin developed a novel style of draftsmanship that involved dashes and lines, loops and dots. In his finished watercolors, he often used this technique to enliven the design by deploying a reed pen over his watercolor washes. In Ouse Bridge, York, the reed pen has left brown dots and dashes that pepper the surface, and this distinctive mannerism becomes almost a trademark of Girtin's mature style. Moreover, his somber coloring suggests a desire to rival oil painting, to achieve the same kind of depth and mellowness of varnished oil paints with translucent watercolors. The rivalry between these two mediums was heating up by the turn of the century. Devotees of watercolor gave it priority over oil for its difficulty of use, while its detractors considered it tainted by amateurism and lamented its growing popularity. Even an amateur watercolorist like Sir George Beaumont could complain that the fashion for watercolors was poaching promising oil painters. Girtin's own exhibited work raised the stakes of the debate by demonstrating the power of watercolor to emulate what was previously thought to be unigue to oil col-ors. Contemporary reports testify to the sensational impact of Girtin's technique when his watercolors were still fresh. As one author put it, "[Girtin's] views of many of our cities, towns, castles, cathedrals, etc, were treated by his pencil in a manner entirely his own; a depth of shadow, a brilliancy of light, and a magical splendour of colours characterized his drawings, and displayed a vigour of inherent genius that promised to raise the art [of watercolor] to the highest summit of excellence."

Matthew Hargraves

Hargraves, Matthew, and Scott Wilcox. Great British Watercolors: from the Paul Mellon collection. New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 2008, pp. 95-98. , no. 41