'Peat Bog, Scotland', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Peat Bog, Scotland

From Liber Studiorum 1807-1819 Watercolours

Date c.1808

MediumWatercolour on paper

Dimensionssupport: 190 x 268 mm

Collection

Tate

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

Reference

D08148

Turner Bequest CXVII T

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

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Peat Bog, Scotland circa 1808

D08148
Turner Bequest CXVII T

Watercolour on off-white wove writing paper, 190 x 268 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Exhibition history

Engraved:
Etching and mezzotint by Turner and George Clint, ‘Peat Bog, Scotland’, published Turner, 23 April 1812

References

1861

Turner’s Liber Studiorum. Photographs from the Thirty Original Drawings by J.M.W. Turner, R.A. in the South Kensington Museum. Published under the Authority of the Department of Science and Art, London and Manchester 1861, reproduced pl.[13].

1859

John Burnet and Peter Cunningham, Turner and his Works: Illustrated with Examples from his Pictures, and Critical Remarks on his Principles of Painting, 2nd ed., revised by Henry Murray, London 1859, p.121 no.13.

1862

Walter Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by his Friends and Fellow-Academicians, London 1862 [1861], vol.II, p.388 no.38.

1872

[J.E. Taylor and Henry Vaughan], Exhibition Illustrative of Turner’s Liber Studiorum, Containing Choice Impressions of the First States, Etchings, Touched Proofs, together with the Unpublished Plates, and a Few Original Drawings for the Work, exhibition catalogue, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London 1872, p.35 under no.45.

1878

W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, A Description and a Catalogue, London 1878, p.93 under no.45.

1885

Rev. Stopford [Augustus] Brooke, Notes on the Liber Studiorum of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., revised ed., London 1885, pp.[149]–54.

1897

Walter Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by his Friends and Fellow-Academicians: A New Edition, London 1897, p.584 no.38.

1903

E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn eds., Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume VII: Modern Painters: Volume V, London 1903, pp.432, 433.

1904

Ibid., Volume V: Modern Painters: Volume III, London 1904, p.399.

1904

Ibid., Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, p.632 no.498.

1906

Ibid., Volume XXI: The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford: Catalogues, Notes, and Instructions, London 1906, p.219 (‘Catalogue of the Rudimentary Series’ in Instructions in Practice of Elementary Drawing ...).

1906

W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, A Description and a Catalogue. Second Edition, Revised Throughout, London 1906, p.109 under no.45.

1909

A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.320, CXVII T.

1921

Untitled typescript list of works relating to 1921 and 1922 Liber Studiorum exhibitions, [circa 1921], Tate exhibition files, Tate Archive TG 92/9/2, p.3.

1924

Alexander J. Finberg, The History of Turner’s Liber Studiorum with a New Catalogue Raisonné, London 1924, reproduced p.[178], p179 under no.45.

1938

Martin Hardie, The Liber Studiorum Mezzotints of Sir Frank Short, R.A., P.R.E. after J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Catalogue & Introduction, London 1938, p.53.

1951

Charles Clare, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, British Painters, London 1951, reproduced p.88.

1974

Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.62.

1974

Gerald Wilkinson, The Sketches of Turner, R.A. 1802–20: Genius of the Romantic, London 1974, p.111, p.114 reproduced.

1977

Jean Selz, Turner, Naefels 1977, reproduced p.56.

1977

Gerald Wilkinson, Turner Sketches 1789–1820, London 1977, reproduced p.125.

1980

Andrew Wilton, Turner and the Sublime, exhibition catalogue, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto 1980, p.[155].

1991

Peter Egri, ‘Axiology and Romanticism: Shelley and Turner’, Acta litteraria Acad. Sci. Hung., vol.33, nos.1–4, 1991, p.140.

1996

Gillian Forrester, Turner’s ‘Drawing Book’: The Liber Studiorum, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1996, pp.24 note 77, 32, reproduced p.84 pl.7 colour, pp.106–7 no.45i, reproduced p.106, p.162.

2008

Gillian Forrester, David Hill, Matthew Imms and others, Reisen mit William Turner: J.M.W. Turner: Das Liber Studiorum, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Stihl, Waiblingen 2008, p.128.

There is no known direct source for Turner’s Liber Studiorum design, though it is derived from impressions gathered on his first tour of Scotland in 1801. It is comparable to some of the mountain studies among the tonal ‘Scottish Pencil’ drawings, such as Tate D03392, D03395 and in particular D03417 (Turner Bequest LVIII 13, 16, 38). Ruskin considered the design ‘taken, with hardly any modification by pictorial influence, straight from nature’1 and Rawlinson expanded on this, ranking it ‘among the great plates of Liber. It is throughout eminently Turnerian. No influence of any other master, no reminiscences or traditions of any earlier school, are to be traced in it. The painter has gone straight to nature; but how truly he has seen, how finely has he drawn what he has seen; how simply, yet tellingly, has he composed his drawing.’2 Andrew Wilton has seen the composition as evidence of Turner’s experience of Scotland leading to a move from the Picturesque towards the Sublime, such that ‘there is no longer any wish ... to charm his audience with the polite formalities of picture-making.’3 Ruskin had observed: ‘Under the influence of such scenery Turner learned to despise the affectations of Italian landscape and the comforts of the Dutch, and prepared himself for the higher grandeur and more threatening gloom of the Alps.’4

In Modern Painters, Ruskin saw the composition as typical of the pessimistic atmosphere of the Liber (not ‘happy rural toil’, but ‘patient striving with hard conditions of life’), showing ‘cold, dark rain, and dangerous labour.’5 The arduous task of cutting the peat both for personal use and as part payment of rent would have occupied a significant proportion of tenant farmers’ time.6 Stopford Brooke noted that ‘of all the wretched figures in the Liber Studiorum, these are the most battered, torn, and tortured by their fate.’ However, Turner ‘may have felt that there were elements in the life of the Highland poor – strength of soul, rugged intelligence, faithful imagination – which redeemed its misery; and, so feeling, have made the storm to pass away and the rainbow to enlighten the mountains.’7 The threatening weather has been seen as an early example of Turner’s clouds and skies as ‘symbolic spectral configurations’ with ‘the grim bogey ... perfectly in place among the sombre clouds and misty rocks of the moorland’.8

The composition is recorded, as ‘8[:] 5 Peat Bog’, in the Liber Notes (2) sketchbook (Tate D12157; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 24), in a draft schedule of the first ten parts of the Liber (D12156–D12158; CLIV (a) 23a–24a)9 dated by Finberg and Gillian Forrester to before the middle of 1808.10 It also appears later in the sketchbook, again as ‘Peat Bog’, in a list of ‘Mountainous’ subjects (Tate D12166; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 28a).11

The Liber Studiorum etching and mezzotint engraving, etched by Turner and engraved by George Clint, bears the publication date 23 April 1812 and was issued to subscribers as ‘Peat Bog, Scotland’ in part 9 (Rawlinson/Finberg nos.42–46;12 see also Tate D08145–D08147, D08149; Turner Bequest CXVII Q, R, S, Vaughan Bequest CXVII U). Tate holds impressions of the preliminary outline etching (Tate A01000) and the published engraving (A01001). Forrester has contrasted the ‘the deeply incised lines’ of the etching, expressing ‘the solidity of the ancient peat bog’ with the ‘delicate’ mezzotint conveying ‘the quicksilver changeability of the atmospheric conditions.’13 It is one of fourteen published Liber Studiorum subjects in Turner’s ‘Mountainous’ category (see also Tate D08113, D08119, D08123, D08130, D08134, D08153, D08156, D08161, D08164, D08165; Turner Bequest CXVI L, R, CXVII C, G, Y, CXVIII J, K, Vaughan Bequest CXVI V, CXVIII B, G).

Thomas Lupton etched and engraved a facsimile of the print in 1864 as one of an unpublished series for the London dealer Colnaghi 14 (see general Liber introduction).

Around 1936–8, Frank Short etched and mezzotinted this composition,15 as one of his interpretations of the published Liber plates (Tate T05057;16 see general Liber introduction).

Cook and Wedderburn V 1904, p.399; see also Forrester 1996, p.32.

Rawlinson 1878, p.93.

Wilton 1980, p.[155].

‘Catalogue of the Rudimentary Series’ in Instructions in Practice of Elementary Drawing..., in Cook and Wedderburn XXI 1906, p.219.

Cook and Wedderburn VII 1903, pp.432, 433.

See Ann Chumbley and Ian Warrell, Turner and the Human Figure: Studies of Contemporary Life, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1989, p.39.

Brooke 1885, p.150.

Egri 1991, p.140; see also Brooke 1885, p.152.

Forrester 1996, pp.160–1 (transcribed).

Finberg 1924, p.xliii; Forrester 1996, pp.13–14.

Forrester 1996, p.162 (transcribed).

Rawlinson 1878, pp.86–96; 1906, pp.101–13; Finberg 1924, pp.165–84.

Forrester 1996, p.107.

Rawlinson 1878, p.197; 1906, p.232; Finberg 1924, p.180.

Hardie 1938, pp.53–4 no.16, reproduced p.[83] pl.II.

Tate Gallery: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions 1986 – 88, London 1996, p.73.

Technical notes:

Given the similarities in ‘technique, pigment and subject’, it has been suggested that Turner may have intended the present design as a contrast to Chain of Alps from Grenoble to Chamberi, published in the next part of the Liber (see Tate D08153; Turner Bequest CXVII Y).1 There are no pencil outlines; washing and washing-out, with some brushstrokes and scratching-out, have been used. Brushstrokes (untypically for the Liber) emphasise the mountain tops. Washing-out has been used for low lights, scratching-out for the brighter ones, and both used for figures in the foreground. The overall very warm brown colour results from the use of an Indian red pigment.2

Forrester 1996, p.111.

Joyce Townsend, circa 1995, Tate conservation files.

Verso:

Blank, save for inscriptions.

Inscribed in pencil ‘T ?’ centre (originally ‘I’, but overwritten)
Stamped in black ‘[crown] | N•G | CXVII – T’ bottom left

Matthew Imms
August 2008

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.