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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Colour Studies of the Sun, Skies and ... > Colour Studies of the Sun and Clouds at ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sunset or Dawn above a Landscape with Water c.1826-40

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sunset or Dawn above a Landscape with Water’ c.1826-40
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Sunset or Dawn above a Landscape with Water c.1826–40
D29026
Turner Bequest CCXCII 75
Gouache and watercolour on grey wove paper 141 x 185 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCXCII – 75’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This work differs from the others in this subsection in being on grey paper, of the sort (along with various blue papers) Turner used to complement sketchbooks of conventional white paper on tours from around 1826 onwards. John Ruskin categorised this sheet among a selection of French subjects, ‘rich in colour, but not first-rate’;1 Finberg in turn suggested a ‘Moselle or Meuse’ river setting,2 while Andrew Wilton proposed that it ‘may have been made during or shortly after the journey to Italy in 1828’.3
Various other highly coloured studies from Turner Bequest section CCXCII have been identified as river and coastal subjects in Germany and elsewhere, but the landscape here is rather less developed, and any link to a specific location is elusive as Turner concentrates instead on clouds catching the pink glow of dawn or dusk.
1
Cook and Wedderburn 1904, p.290.
2
Finberg 1909, II, p.943.
3
Wilton 1975, p.98.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘115 b’ right of centre; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCXCII. 75’ below centre; inscribed in pencil ‘CCXCII. 75’ bottom right.
The surface is slightly rubbed, with what may be traces of pigment offset from another sheet.

Matthew Imms
March 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Sunset or Dawn above a Landscape with Water c.1826–40 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-sunset-or-dawn-above-a-landscape-with-water-r1183183, accessed 24 April 2024.