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 and Shillingford Bridge from the West, Benson Church in the Distance 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Thames and Shillingford Bridge from the West, Benson Church in the Distance’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The River Thames and Shillingford Bridge from the West, Benson Church in the Distance 1805
D05934
Turner Bequest XCV 30
Pencil on white wove paper, 258 x 367 mm
Inscribed ‘Corn’ in left middle distance
Stamped in black ‘XCV 30’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
A right-hand page from the sketchbook, this is one of two views of the bridge at Shillingford from the book, in which Turner looked in opposite directions up and down the Thames; see also Tate D05944; Turner Bequest XCV 40. The present view looks eastwards, towards the wooden bridge (built in 1784 to replace a ferry and itself now replaced by a stone bridge) and the village of Benson in the right distance. The building closer on the right is the inn that is now the Shillingford Bridge Hotel while at the left end of the bridge is a toll house. Turner’s inscription notes the cornfields in the valley. Hill surmises that Shillingford was an evening stop and that this was the second of Turner’s drawings of it, made towards the end of the day.1 It is rather less detailed than the eastwards view, D05944.
1
Hill 1993, p.111
Verso:
Blank.

David Blayney Brown
February 2009

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The River Thames and Shillingford Bridge from the West, Benson Church in the Distance 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 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-and-shillingford-bridge-from-the-west-r1129966, accessed 25 April 2024.