'A Barge on the Thames, ?near Isleworth: a Rainbow', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

A Barge on the Thames, ?near Isleworth: a Rainbow

From Hesperides (1) Sketchbook

Turner Bequest XCIII

Date 1805

MediumWatercolour on paper

Dimensionssupport: 171 x 262 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D05840

Turner Bequest XCIII 42 a

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Turner's sketchbooks

View this artwork in the Hesperides (1) Sketchbook

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Folio 42 Verso:

A Barge on the Thames, ?near Isleworth: a Rainbow 1805

D05840
Turner Bequest XCIII 42a

Watercolour, with scratching out, on white wove paper, prepared with a grey wash, 171 x 262 mm

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Exhibition history

References

1909

A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.243, XCIII 42a, as ‘River Scene, with rainbow’.

1972

Gerald Wilkinson, Turner’s Early Sketchbooks, London 1972, pp.82 reproduced, 83, 87.

1977

Gerald Wilkinson, Turner Sketches 1789–1820, London 1977, pp.56–7 reproduced.

1989

Robert Upstone, Turner: The Second Decade. Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest 1800–1810, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1989, p.50 reproduced.

1993

David Hill, Turner on the Thames: River Journeys in the Year 1805, New Haven and London 1993, pp.32, 35 reproduced in colour pl.43 (and on cover), 163.

1993

Robert Upstone, Sketchbooks of the Romantics, London 1993, p.128 reproduced in colour; and colour detail.

1995

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, London 1995, p.360, reproduced in colour opposite p.336, pl.27.

1997

Anthony Bailey, Standing in the Sun: A Life of J.M.W. Turner, London 1997, pp.x–xi, reproduced in coour between pp.230–1.

2007

Ian Warrell, ‘J.M.W. Turner and the Pursuit of Fame’, in Ian Warrell (ed.), Franklin Kelly and others, J.M.W. Turner, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery of Art, Washington 2007, p.15 reproduced in colour fig.4.

2008

Anna Poznanskaya, Ian Warrell, Mathew Imms and others, ¿¿¿¿¿¿ [Turner], exhibition catalogue, Pushkin Museum of Art, Moscow 2008, p.19 reproduced in colour fig.4.

2009

Fan Di’an, Ian Warrell, Matthew Imms and others, Turner from the Tate Collection, exhibition catalogue, National Art Museum of China, Beijing 2009, p.15 reproduced in colour fig.4.

This is one of a group of watercolour studies of Thames scenery that occupies some of the later folios of the sketchbook; see chiefly 38 verso (D05833) and Introduction to the book for comment. Edward Croft-Murray, in a pencil annotation to a copy of Finberg in the Tate Library, identified the subject as ‘Thames between Isleworth and Kew’ while Hill locates it ‘presumably ... near Isleworth’. Two figures shelter from rain beneath a tree in the left foreground, one sketching. A double rainbow appears, probably also near Isleworth, on folio 40 verso (D05837).

David Blayney Brown
December 2009

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.