'River Landscape with Distant Mountain', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

River Landscape with Distant Mountain

From Drawings and Watercolours Connected with the Welsh and Marches Tours

Date ?1793

MediumWatercolour on paper

Dimensionssupport: 213 x 273 mm

Collection

Tate

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

Reference

D00388

Turner Bequest XXIII N

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

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

River Landscape with Distant Mountain ?1793

D00388
Turner Bequest XXIII N

Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 213 x 273 mm
Stamped in black ‘XXIII N’ bottom right

Exhibition history

References

The view has been variously identified as Snowdon from Portmadoc (C.F. Bell) and Cader Idris from Barmouth (Finberg); the latter is more consistent with Turner’s known itineraries of 1792–3, but no other evidence exists that he travelled even as far north as Cader at this date. Technically, this is as sophisticated an exercise as the view of the Hot Wells, Bristol (Tate D00389; Turner Bequest XXIII O). The handling of atmospheric perspective, and of foliage against the sky, marks this as one of the subtlest of Turner’s watercolour studies to date. The partial erasure of the figures in a boat and on a jetty at the lower centre suggests that Turner was using the sheet to develop an idea for a finished watercolour.

Verso:

Blank; paint smears; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram; inscribed (in a later hand) ‘17’.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

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.