Joseph Mallord William Turner River Scene: ?Near Isleworth 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
River Scene: ?Near Isleworth 1805
D05951
Turner Bequest XCV 47
Turner Bequest XCV 47
Watercolour on white wove paper, 260 x 365 mm
Stamped in black ‘XCV 47’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XCV 47’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1904
Exhibited Drawings, National Gallery, London, various dates to 1904 (801), as ‘English Landscape’.
1938
Display of Watercolours, National Gallery, London, December 1938–September 1939 (frame).
1959
Display of Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, circa March 1959 (no number).
1980
Turner 1775–1851: Drawings and Watercolours of British River Scenes from the British Museum, Bankside Gallery, London, 1980 (33).
1982
Turner in the Open Air. Pastoral Landscapes from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, 1982 (no number).
1989
Turner: The Second Decade. Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest 1800–1810, Tate Gallery, London, January–March 1989 (32).
1993
Turner’s Painting Techniques, Tate Gallery, London, June–October 1993 (5), as ‘Thames River Scene’.
1998
J.M.W. Turner “That Greatest of Landscape Painters”: Watercolours from London Museums, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma, February–April 1998 (10).
2004
Turner and Williamson / In the Haze: Watercolours by Turner and Williamson, Tate Britain, January–May 2004, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight, June–August 2004 (no number).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.247, XCV 47.
1980
Michael Spender and Malcolm Fry, Turner at the Bankside Gallery: Catalogue of an Exhibition of Drawings & Water-colours of British River Scenes from the British Museum, exhibition catalogue, Bankside Gallery, London 1980, pp.74, 75 reproduced.
1989
Robert Upstone, Turner: The Second Decade. Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest 1800–1810, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1989, p.30 reproduced.
1993
Joyce Townsend, Turner’s Painting Techniques, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1993, p.22, 23 reproduced fig.13, 25 reproduced fig.15, detail, 80, as ‘Thames River Scene’.
1993
David Hill, Turner on the Thames: River Journeys in the Year 1805, New Haven and London 1993, p.171, as ‘A house overlooking a backwater’.
1998
Richard P. Townsend, Andrew Wilton, David Blayney Brown and others, J.M.W. Turner: “That Greatest of Landscape Painters”: Watercolors from London Museums, exhibition catalogue, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa 1998, pp.26, 55, 56, 92, 93 reproduced in colour.
2001
David Hill, ‘Thames Sketches, 1805’, in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann eds., The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, p.334.
2001
Joyce H. Townsend, ‘Techniques in Oil and Watercolour’, in Oxford Companion, Oxford 2001, p.329.
Technique and condition
This watercolour has been painted on a very white wove paper. The pale blue indigo washes for the sky were applied to very wet paper, so they have dried with very soft edges. The unpainted areas then read as hazy white clouds. Some of the more yellow bushes on either side of the river were probably applied early, also to wet paper. The darker vegetation and trees, painted in mixed greens made from blue, brown earth pigments and Mars red (a manufactured earth pigment in a brighter shade than the natural ones), were applied as the paper was drying, while the building seen in silhouette was applied to well-dried paper. This gives the wash a harder edge, and makes the building stand out more in spite of its colour being muted by distance, as though through a hazy atmosphere. The hazy atmosphere is not even painted: the diminishing scale of the bushes and the narrowing of the river convey the considerable distance that might be expected to appear hazy.
The highlights in the foreground bushes were scraped out with a small pointed tool or even a sharp fingernail, after the paint was dry, and before then Turner had worked at the paint using his fingers. Two local applications of the intensely coloured blue pigment Prussian blue followed by some smearing with the fingers, and a wash of plain water followed by a thin wash of red lake, gave immediate form and movement to the large area of blank paper reserved for the river. The grey tones were made by mixing red, black and blue. The blue is indigo in these more muted mixtures. There are many shades of green in this landscape, and Turner used intensely coloured Indian yellow and a green lake pigment to increase their tonal range.
Helen Evans
October 2008
Revised by Joyce Townsend
February 2011
How to cite
Helen Evans, 'Technique and Condition', October 2008, revised by Joyce Townsend, February 2011, in David Blayney Brown, ‘River Scene: ?Near Isleworth 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://wwwThis is a right-hand page from the sketchbook. The subject has not been firmly located but, in Hill’s opinion, might be near Isleworth and the same as depicted in Turner’s oil sketch House beside the River, with Trees and Sheep (Tate N02694)1 which he does not otherwise identify.2 Butlin and Joll cite the suggestion of Christopher Pinsent (letter, 2 March 1970) that the latter is a view of St Catherine’s Ferry on the River Wey, but this is unconfirmed. If the buildings are the same, the house appears here in profile, silhouetted against a luminous sky, which makes it appear rather grander, but it has a bay window that might match the one in the oil.
Verso:
Slight pencil sketch of trees. Inscribed in pencil by John Ruskin ‘ Out of schedule 160. JR.’
David Blayney Brown
February 2009
How to cite
David Blayney Brown, ‘River Scene: ?Near Isleworth 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