In Tate Britain
Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
- Medium
- Watercolour on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 307 x 487 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
- Reference
- D25202
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 80
Display caption
The Turner Bequest includes more than four hundred watercolours sketches which have been catalogued as 'Colour Beginnings' (i.e TB CCLXIII). While some of these works have been identified as preparatory ideas, or 'beginnings', for other pictures, many are actually studies of the sky, such as this memorandum of a group of rolling cumulus. Turner is unlikely to have painted these out of doors, and most probably produced them in batches in his studio, using them as a means of testing his skills in watercolour.
Gallery label, August 2004
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