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 Clear or Hazy Skies > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A Clearing Sky above a Landscape c.1828-40

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Clearing Sky above a Landscape’ c.1828-40
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
?A Clearing Sky above a Landscape c.1828–40
D25295
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 173
Watercolour on white wove paper, 308 x 489 mm
Watermark ‘C Ansell | 1828’
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘173’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 173’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg read this slight sheet as a landscape including a ‘distant tower’,1 while Eric Shanes categorised it as a river scene,2 while noting that it may simply be a sheet worked a little to test the qualities of the paper.3 All that can be said from the visual evidence is that the blue washes presumably indicate a sky with some degree of cloud perhaps clearing away, while the pale grey-brown forms towards the bottom right suggest a landscape, possibly with some sort of natural or man-made feature rising from the horizon, assuming the irregular patch of wash to the right of centre had a definite intent. Compare the similarly slight Tate D25206 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 84).
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.827.
2
See Shanes 1997, p.101.
3
Ibid., p.100.
Verso:
Blank; laid down.

Matthew Imms
March 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Clearing Sky above a Landscape c.1828–40 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-a-clearing-sky-above-a-landscape-r1183193, accessed 19 April 2024.