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: The Marquee beside Old London Bridge, with St Paul's Cathedral Beyond; Studies of Flags 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: The Marquee beside Old London Bridge, with St Paul's Cathedral Beyond; Studies of Flags’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 81 Verso:
The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: The Marquee beside Old London Bridge, with St Paul’s Cathedral Beyond; Studies of Flags 1825
D18823
Turner Bequest CCXIII 81a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 187 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Admiralty Flag’ top right, ‘Blue’, ‘w’, ‘RW’, ‘B R [small diagram of flag], Y R’ towards top left, and ‘WR’, ‘B’, ‘B’, ‘[?U...]’. ‘yell’ and ‘Red’ towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the main drawing shows 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. Up-river to the north-west is the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral beyond Southwark Bridge. Compare the views on folio 82 recto opposite (D18824).
Above are notes and small sketches relating to the flags flying from the roof of the marquee, and there are more colour notes at the bottom right. The ceremony and other studies relating to it at the beginning and end of this sketchbook are discussed in the Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The London Bridge Foundation Stone Ceremony: The Marquee beside Old London Bridge, with St Paul’s Cathedral Beyond; Studies of Flags 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-the-marquee-r1172945, accessed 26 April 2024.