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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North Wales 1799-1801 > Dolbadarn Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Figures in Ancient or Biblical Costume c.1799

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Figures in Ancient or Biblical Costume’ c.1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 4 Recto:
Figures in Ancient or Biblical Costume c.1799
D01997
Turner Bequest XLVI 4
Pencil on white wove paper, 130 x 79 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘4’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XLVI – 4’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These outline figure studies may have been copied by Turner from another artist’s drawings; he owned a sketchbook (now in the British Museum, London) that had belonged to Charles Reuben Ryley (?1752–1798),1 a pupil of John Hamilton Mortimer (1740–1779), which contains many subjects of this type. His purpose, however, may well have been to collect ideas for peopling his proposed Bardic pictures; see folio 1 recto (D01993). The central figure with extended arms is apparently haranguing an audience, rather than ‘Moses praying’ as Finberg suggests.2

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
For Ryley and Turner’s interest in him see John Gage, Colour in Turner: Poetry and Truth, London 1969, pp.60 238 note 29.
2
Finberg 1909, I, p.115.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Figures in Ancient or Biblical Costume c.1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-figures-in-ancient-or-biblical-costume-r1179855, accessed 10 May 2024.