Joseph Mallord William Turner

Chepstow Castle from the River Wye

1798

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
Dynevor Castle Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 135 × 95 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D01491
Turner Bequest XL 17 a

Catalogue entry

The composition is continued on folio 18 recto opposite (D01492).
Turner made a drawing of Chepstow in the contemporary Hereford Court sketchbook (Tate D01261; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 14); another study of it in the present book, rather more worked up, is on folios 19 verso–20 recto (D01624, D01626; Turner Bequest XL 93–94). He had visited Chepstow in 1792, making drawings there (Tate D00130; Turner Bequest XII A, and verso, D40034) and a little later a watercolour of Chepstow castle (Courtauld Gallery, London),1 engraved for Walker’s Copper-Plate Magazine in 1794 (Tate impressions: T05883, T05884). Although it was an archetypal Picturesque site, described by William Gilpin (1724–1804)2 and drawn by many artists, he never made it the subject of a mature watercolour.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.311 no.88, reproduced.
2
See William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, &c. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty. Made in the Summer of the Year 1770, London 1782.

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop