Joseph Mallord William Turner

Coastal Terrain, ?South of France or Italy

c.1830

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Gouache and watercolour on paper
Dimensions: Support: 140 × 194 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D24607
Turner Bequest CCLIX 42

Display caption

Turner may have painted these sea studies on one of his many visits to the coast in the 1830s. He would have carried large sheets of blue paper with him on his travels. These could be folded and torn into a number of smaller sheets.

Over the course of his career Turner experimented with many different coloured papers. He particularly liked the variety of effects he could achieve with watercolour and gouache applied onto a blue ground. The darker surface allowed him to use white highlights to great effect when painting foaming waves or the reflection of moonlight.

Gallery label, April 2005

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Catalogue entry

This is one of a large number of sketches on loose sheets of paper depicting hill towns, wooded scenery and rocky coastal terrain, here identified with Turner’s various tours of South of France and Italy. For the grouping and dating of these works, see the section introduction.

Verso:

Streak of dark yellow paint in the centre of the sheet. Notes in pencil on the bottom edge reading ‘42’ and ‘‘CCLIX 42’.

John Chu
June 2015

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