Joseph Mallord William Turner

A Large Broken Stone Partly Covered with Weeds: Perhaps Related to the Foreground of ‘Mercury and Herse’

c.1812–13

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Woodcock Shooting Sketchbook
Medium
Dimensions
Support: 178 × 110 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D09083
Turner Bequest CXXIX 21

Catalogue entry

Despite Finberg’s comparison with the foreground of the painting Mercury and Herse (on the London art market in 2005),1 Butlin and Joll maintain that the drawing ‘does not correspond with any feature in the oil’. If the indications at the bottom right of the block of masonry are read as seated figures, however, the correspondence, though not exact, is perhaps close enough to be considered significant.
1
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.80–2 no.114, pl.122; Sotheby’s sale, London, 5 July 2005, lot 40.
Technical notes:
There is an offset from the pen and ink drawing on folio 20 verso (D09082), opposite.

David Hill
October 2008

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop