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

J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Copy-Drawings 1794-8 > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Battersea Church and Bridge, with Chelsea Beyond ?1797

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Battersea Church and Bridge, with Chelsea Beyond’ ?1797
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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Battersea Church and Bridge, with Chelsea Beyond ?1797
D00857
Turner Bequest XXXII A
Pencil, grey wash and watercolour on white laid paper, 201 x 327 mm
Watermark ‘ER 179[?4]’
Stamped in black ‘XXXII A’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The majority of Turner’s copy-drawings are of generalised Picturesque compositions, occasionally incorporating identifiable topographical elements. This sheet is different in so far as it shows a clearly identifiable place, although it is executed in the broad, unspecific manner of the other copy-drawings.
The Bequest includes remarkably few London views, given that Turner lived there, in one location or another, all his life. This drawing derives special interest from the fact that it includes, at the extreme left, the row of houses in which Turner himself was to live much later in his life. Battersea Church, on the right, is visible from the windows of his house and he is supposed to have painted sunset skies from the gazebo or bay-window built into the west end of the church.
A watercolour of about 1796 showing the view looking across the Thames from the Battersea shore is on a private collection (with Andrew Clayton-Payne, London, 2009). Other topographically precise copy-drawings are the views of Pontypridd Bridge (Tate D00843, D00864; Turner Bequest XXXI A, XXXII H).
The verso is D41458.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Battersea Church and Bridge, with Chelsea Beyond ?1797 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-battersea-church-and-bridge-with-chelsea-beyond-r1140077, accessed 19 May 2013.