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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Cheshire, Derbyshire, North Wales ... > Tabley No.3 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Shipping in the Pool of London off the Custom House c.1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Shipping in the Pool of London off the Custom House’ c.1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 30 Verso:
Shipping in the Pool of London off the Custom House circa 1825
D07017
Turner Bequest CV 27a
Pencil on white wove paper, 108 x 185 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Custom House is on the right, with the Monument behind it and to its left the church of St Magnus the Martyr and the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. The Pool is busy with craft. Although sketched quickly in outline, the composition is the same as in Turner’s watercolour The Custom House (Vancouver Art Gallery)1 engraved by J.C. Allen, 1827. See Introduction to the sketchbook for plans for a series of London subjects in the 1820s. Other more developed drawings of the Custom House in the book, for example folio 75 verso (D07083; Turner Bequest CV 66a), show the central façade added by Robert Smirke in 1825 to the earlier building by David Laing. Generally, these adopt the same viewpoint and must be connected with the same project and contemporary in date.

David Blayney Brown
June 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, pp.358–9 no.516.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Shipping in the Pool of London off the Custom House c.1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2010, 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-shipping-in-the-pool-of-london-off-the-custom-house-r1134538, accessed 23 April 2024.