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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Brighton and Copies from Wilson 1796-7 > Drawings Related to the 'Studies near ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Copy of Richard Wilson's 'Landscape with Bathers, Cattle and Ruin' 1796-7

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Copy of Richard Wilson's 'Landscape with Bathers, Cattle and Ruin'’ 1796-7
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Copy of Richard Wilson’s ‘Landscape with Bathers, Cattle and Ruin’ 1796–7
D00880
Turner Bequest XXXIII I
Pencil and watercolour on laid paper backed with card, 188 x 234 mm
Stamped in black ‘XXXIII I’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Compare the studies in the contemporary Wilson sketchbook (Tate D01209–D01210, D01215–D01216; Turner Bequest XXXVII 92–93, 98–99). Referring to the version of the composition at Tate, Finberg noted many ‘differences in detail’ between Turner’s copy and Richard Wilson’s painting Landscape with Bathers, Cattle and Ruin of about 1770–5 (Tate N01290),1 and concluded that Turner was ‘working to some extent from memory’.2
1
See W.G. Constable, Richard Wilson, London and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1953, p.213 notes to pl.99b, ‘River, with Bathers, Cattle and a Ruin’, under which other versions and their compositional variations are discussed.
2
Finberg 1909, I, p.66.
Verso:
Inscribed in pen and black ink: ‘107 | Study from Wilson’

Andrew Wilton
January 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Copy of Richard Wilson’s ‘Landscape with Bathers, Cattle and Ruin’ 1796–7 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-copy-of-richard-wilsons-landscape-with-bathers-cattle-and-r1149804, accessed 25 April 2024.