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

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Joseph Mallord William Turner The West Tower of Malmesbury Abbey 1791

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The West Tower of Malmesbury Abbey’ 1791
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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The West Tower of Malmesbury Abbey 1791
D00110
Turner Bequest VII C
Pencil, watercolour, bodycolour and pen and brown ink on white wove paper, 277 x 213 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
A study used, as Finberg noted, in conjunction with Tate D00111 (Turner Bequest VII D), for the finished watercolour in Norwich Castle Museum,1 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1792 (436). With its free and energetic drawing in brown ink, reminiscent of the work of Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827), this is stylistically rather different from most of the studies Turner made at Malmesbury in 1791. See also Tate D00111.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.303 no.25, reproduced.
Verso:
Colour trials; inscribed in pencil in a later hand ‘3a’; stamped in black ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘The West Tower of Malmesbury Abbey 1791 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-the-west-tower-of-malmesbury-abbey-r1140430, accessed 19 May 2013.