Joseph Mallord William Turner

Hampton Court Palace from the River Thames

c.1827

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Isle of Wight Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 110 × 185 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D20737
Turner Bequest CCXXVII 3

Catalogue entry

Subsequent to Finberg’s 1909 Inventory, both he and the Turner scholar C.F. Bell identified the subject here as ‘Hampton Court Palace’;1 Eric Shanes2 noted the link to Turner’s watercolour Hampton Court Palace of about 1827 (private collection),3 engraved in 1829 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impression: T04550).
This sketch presents the south front of the palace among trees, looking north-west across the Thames, with the detached Banqueting House in the gardens at the centre, much as shown in the watercolour, and complemented by a studies of details on folio 2 verso opposite (D20736), under which other views are noted, and on the verso (D20738).
1
Undated MS notes by Finberg (died 1939) and C.F. Bell (died 1966) in copies of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, II, p.699.
2
See Shanes 1979, p.156; see also Hill 1993, p.161.
3
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.395 no.812.
Technical notes:
The three pale stone of the three central bays of the Baroque portion of the façade, as well as bands of masonry set within its brickwork, have been indicated by scratching through the overall grey ground to the white paper.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

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