Joseph Mallord William Turner

?The Eddystone Lighthouse in a Storm by a Full Moon

c.1813

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Not on display

Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Vale of Heathfield Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 181 × 228 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D10260
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 41

Catalogue entry

Along with watercolours on folios 40 recto and 41 recto (D10257, D10258; CXXXVII 39, 40) this study perhaps represents the Eddystone Lighthouse, off Plymouth, which Turner may have visited in 1813, producing a finished watercolour of it at night, without a moon, by 1817. A possibly related watercolour of an empty sea and sky is on folio 39 verso (D10256; CXXXVII 38). There is a fuller discussion of the subject and dating under D10258.
The composition is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliated sequence.

Matthew Imms
May 2011

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