Joseph Mallord William Turner

Eric Shanes notes Ian Warrell’s unpublished suggestion1 that this colour study relates to the watercolour Dudley, Worcestershire of about 1832 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight),2 engraved in 1835 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T05097, T06113, T06114). The finished design relates in turn to a sequence of slight pencil sketches made on Turner’s 1830 Midlands tour in the Birmingham and Coventry sketchbook (Tate D22396–D22417; Turner Bequest CCLX 39a–50).

There are possible correspondences between the dim, moonlit hills with silhouetted buildings, the watery foreground with hints of structures or boats and the firelight at the right here, and features in the same juxtapositions in the finished watercolour. The fact that the present sheet is of significantly smaller dimensions than Dudley, Worcestershire’s 288 x 430 mm, whereas the ‘colour beginnings’ related to other England and Wales subjects tend to be larger than the finished designs, perhaps counts against the proposed identification.

Another industrial Midlands ‘colour beginning’, perhaps of Dudley or Birmingham, is Tate D25250 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 128). See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.

Verso:
Blank, save for isolated spots of ?offset watercolour; inscribed in pencil ‘AB218 P.O’ top left, upside down; inscribed in pencil ‘CCLXIII | 228’ bottom right.