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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales and Isle of Wight 1795-1800 > South Wales Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Monnow Bridge, Monmouth 1795

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Monnow Bridge, Monmouth’ 1795
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 61 Recto:
The Monnow Bridge, Monmouth 1795
D00617
Turner Bequest XXVI 63
Pencil on white wove paper, 203 x 264 mm
Watermark: ‘E & P | 1794’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Monow Bridge Monmouth’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XXVI 63’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘XXVI 63’ top right, ascending vertically
The bridge over the Monnow, which joins the Wye at Monmouth, is a medieval structure with an ancient gate tower standing on the bridge itself, which creates an eminently picturesque composition. It was a favourite subject with the topographical artists of the late eighteenth century.
Finberg notes without further comment that the subject of this drawing was sometimes called ‘Gateway and Bridge, Ragland’.1 Dr Michael Rowlands, author of Monnow Bridge and Gate (Stroud 1994), notes that Finberg seems to have been ‘misled by a mistake made in Henry Gastineau’s book Wales Illustrated [1830 and other editions] ... Two versions of Gastineau’s steel engraving of the bridge exist’ but ‘sometimes the print shares the same page as a view entitled “THE KEEP OF RAGLAND CASTLE”. Someone must have got confused because under the Monnow Bridge print it says “GATEWAY & BRIDGE, RAGLAND.”’2
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. For a note on Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire, see under Tate D08159 (Vaughan Bequest CXVIII E).
1
Finberg 1909, I, p.63; Finberg 1918, p.101.
2
Dr Michael Rowlands, email to Tate, 3 February 2015; this information is here gratefully acknowledged.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed by ?John Ruskin in pencil ‘6’; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

Revised by Matthew Imms
February 2015

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘The Monnow Bridge, Monmouth 1795 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2012, revised by Matthew Imms, February 2015, 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-the-monnow-bridge-monmouth-r1140942, accessed 25 April 2024.