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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Dying Ananias c.1799-1800

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 128 Verso:
The Dying Ananias c.1799–1800
D03966
Turner Bequest 127a
Pencil and white chalk on blue laid paper, 83 x 166 mm
Stamped in black ‘LXVI – 127a’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a generalized sketch of the pose of Ananias in The Death of Ananias, one of a series of New Testament subjects painted by Raphael (1483–1520) in 1515 as cartoons for tapestries for the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel (Royal Collection, on permanent loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The figure is reversed from the original, indicating that Turner copied it from a print. He seems to have made use of it for a figure near the centre of his own essay in the Biblical sublime, The Destruction of Sodom, a painting perhaps shown at his own gallery in 1805 (Tate N00474).1

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.44 no.56, pl.66.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘The Dying Ananias c.1799–1800 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-the-dying-ananias-r1180206, accessed 28 March 2024.