J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > Hesperides (1) Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Barges on the Thames, ?Richmond/Isleworth/Kew Area 1805

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Barges on the Thames, ?Richmond/Isleworth/Kew Area’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 39 Verso:
Barges on the Thames, ?Richmond/Isleworth/Kew Area 1805
D05835
Turner Bequest XCIII 39a
Pen and ink and watercolour on white wove paper, prepared with a grey wash, 171 x 262 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of a group of watercolour studies of Thames scenery that occupy 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 near Kew’ while Hill, acknowleding the difficulty of precisely locating the site, suggests Richmond/Isleworth/Kew. He compares the scenery to a watercolour also of an unidentified stretch of the Thames dating from about 1806 (British Museum, London)1 but there seems no particular connection.

David Blayney Brown
October 2007

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.347 no.415.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Barges on the Thames, ?Richmond/Isleworth/Kew Area 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2007, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-barges-on-the-thames-richmondisleworthkew-area-r1130057, accessed 25 April 2024.