Joseph Mallord William Turner

Catalogue entry

433. [N01875] Landscape: Christ and the Woman of Samaria c. 1830

THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (1875)

Canvas, 57 1/4 × 93 1/2 (145·5 × 237·5)

Coll. Turner Bequest 1856 (? 251, ‘1 (Scriptural subject)’ 7'10" × 4'10"); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1910.

Exh. On loan to the National Museum of Wales 1964–74; R.A. 1974–5 (486).

Lit. Armstrong 1902, p. 224; MacColl 1920, p. 28.

A large Italianate landscape of the kind exhibited by Turner from Bay of Baiae (No. 230 [N00505]) onwards, but here perhaps not carried quite to the degree of finish he deemed necessary for an exhibited work of this character. It is probably the ‘Scriptural subject’ listed as no. 251 [N00556] in the Schedule of the Turner Bequest and seems to show Christ and the Woman of Samaria by Jacob's well (John iv, 6–7), set in a landscape with an Italian hill-town similar to but not the same as Tivoli (see No. 311 [N03388]). The composition, with a hill-town on the left and an avenue of trees on the right, is particularly close to Palestrina, begun in Rome in 1828 and exhibited at the R.A. in 1830 (No. 295 [N06283]).

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

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