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 Classical Ruins on a Rocky Shore with Distant Mountains c.1830-40

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Classical Ruins on a Rocky Shore with Distant Mountains’ c.1830-40
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Classical Ruins on a Rocky Shore with Distant Mountains c.1830–40
D34926
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 429
Pencil on white wove paper, 294 x 575 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘cccxliv.42[?6]’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXLIV 429’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg called this large, faint drawing a ‘Study for Bible illustration’,1 presumably thinking of the series of twenty-six watercolour designs Turner produced between about 1832 and 1835 from topographical drawings by other artists, to be engraved for Edward and William Finden’s Landscape Illustrations of the Bible, later issued by John Murray in The Biblical Keepsake2 (Tate impressions: T05152–T05175, T06653–T06654).
The composition shows a distant colonnaded building, probably a ruined classical temple, on a promontory beyond a wooded valley, with mountains rising on the far side of a lake or bay above the ruled horizon. The design is defined by further ruled lines within an area of 250 x 420 mm, considerably larger than the approximately 120–140 x 200 mm dimensions of the Finden watercolours, and a direct link to the series is perhaps unlikely.
The subject may be the coast of the Mediterranean or Aegean. Compare the settings of the ruins in watercolours of the Temple of Minerva, Cape Colonna (Sunium) (Townley Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Burnley),3 engraved in 1832 for Finden’s Landscape Illustrations to Byron (Tate impression: T06178), and The Temple of Poseidon at Sunium (Cape Colonna) of about 1834 (Tate T07561).4 See also the earlier pair of paintings, The Temple of Jupiter Panellenius Restored and View of the Temple of Jupiter Panellenius in the Island of Aegina, with the Greek National Dance of the Romaika, exhibited in 1816 (private collections).5
Very similar in its size and technique to the present work, Tate D34925 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 428) shows a related composition, and the two were perhaps ideas for a pair of thematically linked watercolours or paintings. Finberg placed them somewhat arbitrarily in a large ‘Miscellaneous: black and white’ category dated to about 1830–41;6 the range has modified slightly here to cover the 1830s in case definite connections to Turner’s illustrative work of that period comes to light.
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.1149.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.447–50 nos.1236–1263, most reproduced (various collections).
3
Ibid., p.445 no.1213, reproduced.
4
Ibid., p.356 no.497.
5
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.97–8 no.133, pl.138 (colour), and pp.98–100 no.134, pl.139 (colour).
6
Finberg 1909, II, p.1149.
Technical notes:
There is an 80 mm tear to the left-hand edge and another of 20 mm at the right, as well as a crescent-shaped tear to the surface. The paper is heavyweight, verging on card. There are traces of white paper adhering towards the top.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘cccxliv.429’ bottom centre.

Matthew Imms
August 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Classical Ruins on a Rocky Shore with Distant Mountains c.1830–40 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-classical-ruins-on-a-rocky-shore-with-distant-mountains-r1185732, accessed 17 May 2024.