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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Likely English, Scottish or Welsh ...

Colour Studies and Drawings of Unidentified or Unconfirmed English, Scottish or Welsh Subjects c.1820–45

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This small section comprises watercolour studies and a few topographical pencil sketches of what appear to be subjects in England, Scotland or Wales which have yet to be linked to a particular tour or definitively related to finished compositions. Most of them are ‘colour beginnings’ of the sort Turner developed as part of his studio practice when producing highly finished watercolours to be engraved for publications such as the Picturesque Views in England and Wales; for a discussion of the function of such works in general, see the Introduction to the ‘England and Wales Colour Studies c.1825–39’ section of this catalogue. Where they bear no watermark and other clues as to dating have been unforthcoming, the sheets included here have been assigned to about 1820–40 pending further investigation, broadly in line with Turner’s work on England and Wales, as well as numerous other concurrent schemes during the 1820s and 1830s.
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D25263, D25269, D25309, D25323, D25324, D25345, D25360, D25388, D25407, D25421, D25440, D25496, D34123, D34449–D34453, D34835, D34951, D35986, D35991, D35992, D36048, D41444
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 141, 147, 187, 201, 202, 223, 238, 265, 284, 298, 317, 373, CCCXLI 399, CCCXLIV 92–96, 352, 450, CCCLXIV 143, 147, 148, 203
This small section comprises watercolour studies and a few topographical pencil sketches of what appear to be subjects in England, Scotland or Wales which have yet to be linked to a particular tour or definitively related to finished compositions.1 Most of them are ‘colour beginnings’ of the sort Turner developed as part of his studio practice when producing highly finished watercolours to be engraved for publications such as the Picturesque Views in England and Wales; for a discussion of the function of such works in general, see the Introduction to the ‘England and Wales Colour Studies c.1825–39’ section of this catalogue.2
Where they bear no watermark and other clues as to dating have been unforthcoming, the sheets included here have been assigned to about 1820–40 pending further investigation, broadly in line with Turner’s work on England and Wales, as well as numerous other concurrent schemes during the 1820s and 1830s.
1
The author is very grateful to fellow Tate Turner cataloguers Alice Rylance-Watson and John Chu for intensive discussions in late October 2014, when the contents of the sections of separate sheets then remaining to be catalogued were largely drawn up.
2
See also Eric Shanes, ‘Beginnings’ in Evelyn Joll, Martin Butlin and Luke Herrmann (eds.), The Oxford Companion to J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 2001, pp.21–3; among many other accounts, see also Andrew Wilton in Martin Butlin, Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.26; and Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.187.

Matthew Imms
August 2016

Artworks in this grouping

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Colour Studies and Drawings of Unidentified or Unconfirmed English, Scottish or Welsh Subjects c.1820–45’, August 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/colour-studies-and-drawings-of-unidentified-or-unconfirmed-english-scottish-or-welsh-r1184476, accessed 25 April 2024.