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 London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: Inside the Marquee, with the Stone 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: Inside the Marquee, with the Stone’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 78 Verso:
The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: Inside the Marquee, with the Stone 1825
D18818
Turner Bequest CCXIII 78a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 187 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This sketch shows the framework of the arena fitted out within the marquee erected over the coffer-dam around the site of the southernmost pier of the new London Bridge, for the foundation stone ceremony held on the riverbed on 15 June 1825. The large stone itself is at the bottom centre. Compare the engraving of the ‘Coffer-Dam, and the position of the first stone’ in Richard Thomson’s near-contemporary book Chronicles of London Bridge.1
This is the first of a sequence of hurried sketches, apparently made in the course of the ceremony, working backwards through the book to folio 71 verso (D18804). The event and other studies relating to it at the beginning and end of this sketchbook are discussed in the Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
‘An Antiquary’ [Richard Thomson], Chronicles of London Bridge, London 1827, p.646.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: Inside the Marquee, with the Stone 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-london-bridge-foundation-stone-ceremony-inside-the-r1172940, accessed 21 September 2024.