Joseph Mallord William Turner

Ely Cathedral: The Western Tower Seen from the South East

1794

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Drawings Made on the Midland Tour
Medium
Graphite and watercolour on paper
Dimensions
Support: 208 × 279 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D00352
Turner Bequest XXI Y

Catalogue entry

Turner made another pencil study of the cathedral from this angle, though from farther away (private collection). Both drawings may have been used as guides for a finished watercolour of about 1796, bought by Sir Richard Colt Hoare of Stourhead, Wiltshire (private collection).1 See also Tate D00369 (Turner Bequest XXII P). Turner reverted to the composition for one of the subjects of his series Picturesque Views in England and Wales, as Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire, of about 1831 (private collection).2
Finberg inadvertently gave this sheet two numbers in his 1909 Inventory.
1
Wilton 1979, pp.320–1 no.193, reproduced.
2
Ibid., p.399 no.845, pl.191.
Verso:
Blank; some splashes of brown colour; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram; inscribed, in a later hand ‘7’.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

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