Joseph Mallord William Turner

A Sunset or Sunrise ?over Water

c.1823–4

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Old London Bridge Sketchbook
Medium: Watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 98 × 162 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D17887
Turner Bequest CCV 31

Catalogue entry

This elemental study suggests a sunset or sunrise beneath lowering clouds over a watery landscape, with the sun’s reflection lifted out of the wet foreground, leaving finger prints. Vertical strokes dragged through the horizontal bands at the right evoke tall trees. There is a very slight, inadvertent continuation on folio 30 verso opposite (D40964). This is one of a sequence of fourteen monochrome, tonal studies of landscapes and cloudy skies running from about the middle of the sketchbook onwards; for the others and further discussion, see the Introduction.

Verso:

Blank, save for slight continuations of wash strokes from folio 32 recto (D17888).1

Matthew Imms
December 2014

See Gerald Wilkinson, Turner’s Colour Sketches 1820–34, London 1975, p.27, where the relevant few millimetres are reproduced with D17888.

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