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 ... > Mortlake and Pulborough Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The House and Garden at 'The Limes', Mortlake, Looking North-East down the River Thames ?1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The House and Garden at 'The Limes', Mortlake, Looking North-East down the River Thames’ ?1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 43 Verso:
The House and Garden at ‘The Limes’, Mortlake, Looking North-East down the River Thames ?1825
D18772
Turner Bequest CCXIII 43a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 187 mm
Part watermark ‘R Bar | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘R’ bottom left, and ‘B[...]’ towards bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As has long been recognised,1 this drawing relates to the painting The Seat of William Moffatt Esq., at Mortlake. Early (Summer’s) Morning, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1826 (Frick Collection, New York);2 a companion piece, Mortlake Terrace, the Seat of William Moffatt, Esq. Summer’s Evening, was shown at the same venue the following year (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).3 The most precise study for the morning view is on folio 11 recto (D18725), where profuse foliage is shown. In the present drawing, made in less detail with a softer or blunter pencil, the focus is on the trunks and branches of the trees, perhaps suggesting a return visit to the garden of ‘The Limes’ at Mortlake in the autumn or winter of 1825–6; see also the related view on folio 44 recto (D18773). As discussed in the sketchbook’s Introduction, in between is the jagged stub of another leaf, possibly with signs of a further drawing, which would presumably also have been a Mortlake view.
One of four separate Mortlake studies shows a similar view (Tate D25518; Turner Bequest CCLXIII a 3). Their status as direct sketches is uncertain, and one of them is watermarked 1826 (Tate D34018; Turner Bequest CCCXLI 299).
For more on the house, the paintings and other studies, see the Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.649, Frick Collection, I, 1968, pp.131, 132 note 1, Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.103 and Butlin and Joll 1984, p.145.
2
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.144–5 no.235, pl.236 (colour).
3
Ibid., pp.147–8 no.239, pl.237 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The House and Garden at ‘The Limes’, Mortlake, Looking North-East down the River Thames ?1825 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-the-house-and-garden-at-the-limes-mortlake-looking-north-r1172894, accessed 27 April 2024.