Joseph Mallord William Turner

There are four landscape studies here, showing loose variations on a theme of trees, bridges and buildings. Tate D34851–D34856 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 363–368) are all on two sides of a quartered single sheet, as discussed in the technical notes below. All but D35852, with its extensive but largely illegible inscriptions, include several landscapes, several with harbour scenes and classical buildings, in rapid permutations of the landscape and seaport motifs of Claude Lorrain, a consistent influence on Turner (see the Introduction to this subsection).

Finberg placed the sequence somewhat arbitrarily in a large ‘Miscellaneous: black and white’ category dated to about 1830–41;1 this range has been extended a little here to begin in 1828, when the sheet was manufactured, through to the early 1840s, after which Turner’s production declined. This is line with Ian Warrell’s dating of the variant classical seaport studies on visiting cards also included in this subsection (Tate D34929–D34939; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 431–439).

Technical notes:

Tate D34851–D34856 (Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 363–368) are all on two sides of a single sheet folded into quarters, with the watermark ‘John Hall | 1828’ exactly at the centre; each averages approximately 183 x 213 mm of the overall dimensions. Finberg listed them individually as ‘folded’,1 albeit without noting their all being on one sheet; once folded firmly into four, they were lightly folded twice more, leaving three parallel creases across each quarter.

D34851–D34854 (CCCXLIV 363–366) are on one side, at the top left, bottom left, top right and bottom right relative to each other. D34855 and D34856 (CCCXLIV 367, 368) are on the other side, at the bottom left and right relative to each other, the upper half being blank. The sheet is almost ripped in half by a jagged tear along the right-hand half of the horizontal fold; it also extends up to the left from the centre, across the bottom right corner of the present work. There is also a brown stain at the top left.