Joseph Mallord William Turner

Abingdon Bridge, with St Helen’s Church to the Right

1805

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Hesperides (2) Sketchbook
Medium
Pen and ink on paper
Dimensions
Support: 143 × 228 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D05899
Turner Bequest XCIV 40 a

Catalogue entry

See folio 4 verso of the sketchbook (D05850) for a slightly more developed sketch of the same view of the Thames, which here splits into two channels, with Abingdon Bridge, the adjacent Nag’s Head Inn and, beyond the bridge in the right distance, the spire of St Helen’s Church. Another slight sketch of the bridge is on folio 41 (D05900) and is effectively a continuation of the present subject towards the right. Butlin and Joll relate the present sketch to the painting Abingdon (Tate N00485), probably shown in Turner’s Gallery in 1806 or 1807, while observing that the relationship is ‘less close’ than with 4 verso which Turner used for the picture.1

David Blayney Brown
December 2007

1
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.77 no.107 (pl.114), as ‘Dorchester Mead, Oxfordshire’, exhibited in Turner’s Gallery, 1810

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