Joseph Mallord William Turner

Study for ‘The Thames near Windsor’

c.1805–7

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Hesperides (1) Sketchbook
Medium
Pen and ink on paper
Dimensions
Support: 171 × 262 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D05829
Turner Bequest XCIII 36 a

Catalogue entry

A composition study for The Thames near Windsor perhaps exhibited at Turner’s Gallery in 1807 (Tate T03871, displayed at Petworth House).1 A boat, punt and figures net-fishing and hauling in their nets appear in the foreground as in the picture; Hill notes that they would be netting salmon. The view from the Middlesex bank of the Thames takes in Richmond Hill and the bridge from a position slightly further away than folio 37 verso (D05831), which served for another picture, View of Richmond Hill and Bridge exhibited at Turner’s Gallery in 1808 (Tate N00557).2 As Hill also observes, the ?1807 picture might be more appropriately titled ‘The Thames near Richmond’,3 although it is more an idyllic, Utopian ‘type than a depiction of any specific place’.4

David Blayney Brown
October 2007

1
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.50–1 no.64 (pl.74).
2
Ibid., p.56 no.73 (pl.83).
3
Hill 1993, p.124.
4
Ibid., p.125.

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