'Stormy Sky with Lightning', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Stormy Sky with Lightning

From Herstmonceux and Pevensey Sketchbook

Turner Bequest XCI

Date c.1806-10

MediumChalk and graphite on paper

Dimensionssupport: 128 x 201 mm

Collection

Tate

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

Reference

D05676

Turner Bequest XCI 59

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

Turner's sketchbooks

View this artwork in the Herstmonceux and Pevensey Sketchbook

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Folio 59 Recto:

Stormy Sky with Lightning circa 1806–10

D05676
Turner Bequest XCI 59

Pencil and white chalk on cream wove paper, prepared with a buff wash, 128 x 201 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘59’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘XCI 59’ bottom left, descending vertically
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram, bottom right

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

References

More stormy skies follow on folios 60 and 61 of the sketchbook (D05677, D05678).

The incidence of these near sketches of Hastings and Battle is suggestive as Turner was later to use storms and lightning-blasted trees as metaphors for battle and the death of King Harold from an arrow, in his watercolour Battle Abbey, the Spot where Harold Fell (currently untraced),1 engraved by William Bernard Cooke for Views in Sussex.

The leaf is stained.

Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.348 no.423.

Verso:

Blank

David Blayney Brown
March 2011

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.