Joseph Mallord William Turner

Colour Study: Inveraray

c.1808–10

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Watercolours Derived from the 1801 Scottish Tour
Medium
Watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Support: 670 × 1013 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D03641
Turner Bequest LX J

Catalogue entry

This is a large preparatory study for an unexecuted watercolour; the composition is perhaps derived from the ‘Scottish Pencil’ drawing, Tate D03389 (Turner Bequest LVIII 10). A small watercolour view of Inveraray in Manchester Art Gallery1 follows the compositional layout of this sheet closely, but it is possible that Turner embarked on this larger variant subsequently, having been attracted to the neo–classical architecture of the town, especially the conspicuous pedimented and pilastered front of the parish church in which he may have seen possibilities for a more substantial work in the classicising manner he adopted in the years around 1805, for instance in his view of the Lake of Geneva, with Mont Blanc from the Lake of about 1805 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven).2
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.340 no.352, reproduced.
2
Ibid., p.342 no.370, reproduced.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

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