Joseph Mallord William Turner

A Sunset over a Lake or River

c.1823–4

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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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
D17900
Turner Bequest CCV 38

Catalogue entry

This is perhaps the most heavily worked 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. Finberg called it a ‘lurid sunset’,1 with the sun obscured by cloud low in the centre and reflected in the waterlogged, reedy foreground, where the wet pigment has been lifted out leaving the artist’s finger prints.
1
Finberg 1909, I , p.623.
Verso:
Blank, save for slight watercolour offsetting from folio 39 recto (D17901).

Matthew Imms
December 2014

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