In Tate Britain
Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
- Medium
- Gouache and watercolour on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 193 x 280 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
- Reference
- D36163
Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 306
Display caption
The modern concept of abstraction would not have been understood or endorsed in the nineteenth century, even by an artist as experimental as Turner. He would not have intended these late, loose colour beginnings to have been exhibited during his lifetime.
Nevertheless, in each of these works the elements of the composition are reduced to the barest representation of sea and sky. These private, informal studies reveal Turner’s intuitive ability to think of landscape in terms of pure colour.
Gallery label, July 2008
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Catalogue entry
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