Joseph Mallord William Turner

Leaves of Burdock

c.1799–1800

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Egyptian Details Sketchbook
Medium
Dimensions: Support: 83 × 166 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D03836
Turner Bequest LXVI 4

Catalogue entry

There are further studies of roadside plants on folios 6 recto (D03837; Turner Bequest LXVI 5) and 98 verso (D03935); compare the study of burdock in the contemporary Studies for Pictures sketchbook (Tate D04130; Turner Bequest LXIX 114). The burdock, with its large-scale, somewhat Baroque leaf forms, was a useful element in landscape foregrounds, much in use by the seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painters, and was no doubt studied here with a view to its being incorporated into watercolour subjects.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘214’ (deleted), and ‘1163’.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

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