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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Italianate Landscapes and Classical ... > Studies of Landscapes, Townscapes and ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Four Wooded Landscapes with Bridges c.1828-45

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Four Wooded Landscapes with Bridges’ c.1828-45
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Four Wooded Landscapes with Bridges c.1828–45
D34851
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 363
Pencil on white laid paper, 365 x 225 mm
Partial watermark ‘John’
Inscribed in red ink ‘363’ bottom right (faint)
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLIV 363’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are four landscape studies here, showing loose variations on a theme of trees, bridges and buildings. Tate D34851–D34856 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 363–368) are all on two sides of a quartered single sheet, as discussed in the technical notes below. All but D35852, with its extensive but largely illegible inscriptions, include several landscapes, several with harbour scenes and classical buildings, in rapid permutations of the landscape and seaport motifs of Claude Lorrain, a consistent influence on Turner (see the Introduction to this subsection).
Finberg placed the sequence somewhat arbitrarily in a large ‘Miscellaneous: black and white’ category dated to about 1830–41;1 this range has been extended a little here to begin in 1828, when the sheet was manufactured, through to the early 1840s, after which Turner’s production declined. This is line with Ian Warrell’s dating of the variant classical seaport studies on visiting cards also included in this subsection (Tate D34929–D34939; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 431–439).
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.1143.
Technical notes:
Tate D34851–D34856 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 363–368) are all on two sides of a single sheet folded into quarters, with the watermark ‘John Hall | 1828’ exactly at the centre; each averages approximately 183 x 213 mm of the overall dimensions. Finberg listed them individually as ‘folded’,1 albeit without noting their all being on one sheet; once folded firmly into four, they were lightly folded twice more, leaving three parallel creases across each quarter.
D34851–D34854 (CCCXLIV 363–366) are on one side, at the top left, bottom left, top right and bottom right relative to each other. D34855 and D34856 (CCCXLIV 367, 368) are on the other side, at the bottom left and right relative to each other, the upper half being blank. The sheet is almost ripped in half by a jagged tear along the right-hand half of the horizontal fold; it also extends up to the left from the centre, across the bottom right corner of the present work. There is also a brown stain at the top left.
1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.1143.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
August 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Four Wooded Landscapes with Bridges c.1828–45 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-four-wooded-landscapes-with-bridges-r1185725, accessed 17 May 2024.