Joseph Mallord William Turner

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.

Verso:

Blank; stamped in black ink with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left.