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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study for a Biblical Picture 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study for a Biblical Picture’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 95 Verso:
Study for a Biblical Picture 1816
D11023
Turner Bequest CXLIV 95a
Pencil on white wove paper, 97 x 154 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is the first of a series of historical studies, biblical and classical, running intermittently through the later pages of the sketchbook to folio 103 verso (D11036); see Introduction to the sketchbook. It is not altogether clear what the present subject might be, but perhaps we can make out a host of figures in the foreground, another in the cloud above centre and a figure of an angel to the right. If so Turner might be working towards a scene of the defeat of the rebel angels from Milton’s Paradise Lost. Alternatively, a painting, The Vision of Jacob’s Ladder (Tate N05507),1 reworked c.1830 but begun considerably earlier, might bear some general resemblance

David Hill
January 2009

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.276–7 no.435 (pl.442).

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Study for a Biblical Picture 1816 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 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-study-for-a-biblical-picture-r1144212, accessed 23 April 2024.