Joseph Mallord William Turner

Bridgnorth: The Bridge and Gatehouse

1794

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
Matlock Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 111 × 181 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D00227
Turner Bequest XIX 19

Catalogue entry

The present bridge over the River Severn at Bridgnorth dates from 1823. It replaced a much older structure which, with its picturesque toll-house, had admirers among antiquarian topographers and travellers passing through the town on the road from London to North Wales; Turner’s colleague Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) made a memorably Sublime watercolour of it in 1802 (based on a drawing of perhaps 1798); this is in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, London.1
Turner made another drawing of the bridge on folio 21 recto (D00228; Turner Bequest XIX 20) from which he derived a watercolour to be engraved for the Copper-Plate Magazine.
1
Greg Smith, Peter Bower, Anne Lyles and others, Thomas Girtin: The Art of Watercolour, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2002, pp.230–1 no.179, reproduced in colour.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in black ink with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop