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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Virginia Water, with the Chinese Fishing Temple Beyond c.1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Recto:
Virginia Water, with the Chinese Fishing Temple Beyond c.1827
D22120
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 75
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘75’ bottom left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 75’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The focus is the Chinese Fishing Temple (now gone), seen to the north from the opposite shore of Virginia Water, with Johnson’s Pond receding to its right. This is one among several adjacent head-on views which informed the second of two Virginia Water watercolours of about 1829 (untraced),1 engraved for The Keepsake in 1830 (Tate impressions: T04616, T04617, T06140); the watercolour has a tighter composition, corresponding the right-hand half of this page. Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the trees continue a little to the right on folio 76 verso opposite (D22119; CCXXXVIII 74a).
For other views around Virginia Water, see under folio 73 verso (D22113; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 71a).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.359 no.520.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Virginia Water, with the Chinese Fishing Temple Beyond c.1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-virginia-water-with-the-chinese-fishing-temple-beyond-r1148761, accessed 28 March 2024.