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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > Old London Bridge Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Sunset over a Lake or River c.1823-4

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Sunset over a Lake or River’ c.1823-4
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 38 Recto:
A Sunset over a Lake or River c.1823–4
D17900
Turner Bequest CCV 38
Watercolour on white wove paper, 98 x 162 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘38’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCV – 38’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is perhaps the most heavily worked of a sequence of fourteen monochrome, tonal studies of landscapes and cloudy skies running from about the middle of the sketchbook onwards; for the others and further discussion, see the Introduction. Finberg called it a ‘lurid sunset’,1 with the sun obscured by cloud low in the centre and reflected in the waterlogged, reedy foreground, where the wet pigment has been lifted out leaving the artist’s finger prints.
1
Finberg 1909, I , p.623.
Verso:
Blank, save for slight watercolour offsetting from folio 39 recto (D17901).

Matthew Imms
December 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Sunset over a Lake or River c.1823–4 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-sunset-over-a-lake-or-river-r1172614, accessed 23 April 2024.