Joseph Mallord William Turner

Extensive Landscape with River or Estuary and a Distant Mountain

?c.1830–40

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Not on display

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 1410 × 2515 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: N05542

Catalogue entry

530. [N05542] Extensive Landscape with River or Estuary and a Distant Mountain c. 1830–40?

THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (5542)

Canvas, original size approx. 55 1/2 × 99 (141 × 251·5); the picture has been restretched on a different sized stretcher, 58 1/4 × 94 (148 ×238·5), with the result that approx. 3 1/2 (9), 1(2·5) and 1 1/2 (4) of painted canvas is turned over the left, top and right edges while 3 3/4 (9·5) of unpainted canvas is exposed within the stretcher area at the bottom

Coll. Turner Bequest 1856 (249, 1 unidentified 8'1" × 4'10 3/4"; identified 1946 by chalk number on back); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1947.

Lit. Davies 1946, pp. 168, 190.

The canvas is a double one, typical of many of Turner's paintings, and the fact that the double canvas has survived suggests that the canvas was at least removed from the original stretcher, if not restretched, by Turner himself.

The picture has not yet been cleaned and the forms are barely laid in, but the rectangular shapes in the foreground suggest that Turner had some architectural features in mind.

Published in:
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984