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 > Thames, from Reading to Walton ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The River Thames, Marlow Bridge, Church, Weir and Mill from near the Lock 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Thames, Marlow Bridge, Church, Weir and Mill from near the Lock’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The River Thames, Marlow Bridge, Church, Weir and Mill from near the Lock 1805
D05906
Turner Bequest XCV 2
Pencil on white wove paper, 259 x 367 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘12’ at centre (indicating number of piers of the bridge)
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘2’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XCV 2’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This was a right-hand page from the sketchbook. The fairly quick sketch of Marlow is taken from the top of the lock looking over the weir and indicates the weather, showing cumulus clouds from the north-west. The wooden ‘New Bridge’ seen here, with its twelve supporting piers as noted by Turner, was a recent structure in 1805. Samuel Ireland describes it as ‘the best object as a wooden bridge that I remember to have seen’ with ‘balustrades ... painted white, in imitation of stone-work’.1 It was to be replaced by the present iron suspension bridge in 1835. The church shown here is also a different building today. The inn on the left, then the Angler’s Rest, is now the Compleat Angler.
Turner made another drawing in this sketchbook looking back towards Marlow from Winter Hill, about a mile downstream (D05907; Turner Bequest XCV 3).
1
Samuel Ireland, Picturesque Views on the River Thames, London 1792, vol.I, p.171.
Verso:
Blank. Laid down.

David Blayney Brown
January 2009

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The River Thames, Marlow Bridge, Church, Weir and Mill from near the Lock 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2009, 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-river-thames-marlow-bridge-church-weir-and-mill-from-r1129937, accessed 20 April 2024.