Joseph Mallord William TurnerWater Mill c.1808

Engraved:
Etching and mezzotint by Turner and Robert Dunkarton, ‘Water Mill.’, published Turner, 1 February 1812

Along with Hind Head Hill, St Catherine’s Hill near Guildford and Hedging and Ditching (see Tate D08130, D08137, D08151; Turner Bequest CXVII C, J, W) this Liber Studiorum composition is derived from slight sketches made in the Spithead sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest C), generally thought to have been made on Turner’s round trip from London to Portsmouth in October and November 1807.1 Falling between those of Hindhead and Guildford – suggesting that the actual mill lay somewhere between those two locations – the drawing developed for the present design (D06582; C 52a) is so slight, with little to indicate the building’s function, that many elements of the mill and its surroundings must have been either recalled from memory or simply invented; as Gillian Forrester points out, Turner also felt free to change the season to summer, ² in order to allude to the harvest with the woman carrying a sheaf.

The design is one of a number in the Liber depicting more or less prominent watermills (see in particular Bridge and Cows, Pembury Mill, Kent, and Mill near the Grand Chartreuse – drawings respectively Tate D08102, D08116, D08156; Turner Bequest CXVI A, O, Vaughan Bequest CXVIII B). Forrester has discussed the possible influence of The Water Mill, the first prominent painting by Turner’s emulator Augustus Wall Callcott, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1805 (private collection), ³ although David Blayney Brown has compared Callcott’s ‘monumental and elegiac’ treatment to Turner’s ‘EP’ Liber category (probably indicating ‘Elevated Pastoral’ – see general Liber introduction) rather than the everyday world of the ‘Pastoral’ subjects with which the present design was included.4

In Modern Painters, Ruskin regarded the scene as consistent with Turner’s dwelling on ‘decay and humiliation’ and ‘patient striving with hard conditions of life’ in the Liber, with ‘the water-mill, beyond the fallen steps, overgrown with the thistle: itself a ruin, mud-built at first, now propped on both sides; – the planks torn from its cattle-shed; ... the old mill-stone – useless for many a day – half-buried in slime, at the bottom of the wall; the listless children, listless dog, and the poor gleaner bringing her single sheaf to be ground.’5 Yet earlier in the same work, he had considered the latter (in engraved form) ‘exquisite’,6 and elsewhere declared that ‘it is pleasant to pass ... to this piece of rustic life, in which the repose of its natural tenor is sinking into the natural repose of decay.’7 He eventually returned to the pessimistic view he had expressed in Modern Painters, concluding that ‘the master insists upon the ancient curse of the earth [God’s curse on Adam] – “Thorns also and Thistles shall it bring forth to thee.”’8

The composition is recorded, as ‘7[:] 1 Dunkartons Mill’, 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, as ‘15 Dunkarton Mill’, in a list of published and unpublished ‘Pastoral’ subjects (Tate D12160; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 25a).11

The Liber Studiorum etching and mezzotint engraving, etched by Turner and engraved by Robert Dunkarton, bears the publication date 1 February 1812 and was issued to subscribers as ‘Water Mill.’ in part 8 (Rawlinson/Finberg nos.37–41;12 see also Tate D08141, D08142, D08144; Turner Bequest CXVII N, O, P). Tate holds impressions of the preliminary outline etching (Tate A00984) and the published engraving (A00985). It is one of fourteen published Liber Studiorum subjects in Turner’s ‘Pastoral’ category (see also Tate D08102, D08111, D08116, D08121, D08127, D08136, D08145, D08151, D08158, D08167; Turner Bequest CXVI A, J, O, T, Z, CXVII I, Q, W, CXVIII D, M; and Tate N02941).

Frank Short included this composition13 among his Twelve Subjects from the Liber Studiorum of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Etched and Mezzotinted by Frank Short (published by Robert Dunthorne of the Rembrandt Gallery, London, between 1885 and 1888), the first series of his Liber interpretations (Tate T05044 and T05045;14 see general Liber introduction).

Technical notes:

There was no initial overall wash, and pencil work is limited to the woman at the left. Some washes were applied to wet paper, the lights were reserved and brushwork followed, but not scratching-out; instead there is rubbing out, perhaps using bread, at the bottom of the steps, and the prop to the right of the mill was washed out, as were the clouds from the uniformly washed sky. Fingerprints are also evident in the washes, most clearly on the wall to the left of the waterwheel. The overall colour is a warm brown, with touches in cooler shades, the pigments being Indian red, burnt sienna, and umber; there are small brushstrokes in the full range of browns in the foreground, and parts of the mill itself are picked out in warm shades.1

Verso:

Blank, save for inscriptions.

Inscribed in pencil ‘M’ centre right
Stamped in black ‘[crown] | N•G | CXVII – M’ bottom left

There are abrasions where the sheet was formerly stuck down.