Joseph Mallord William Turner

Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. This a view looking downstream, probably from a boat. Sion (or Syon) Ferry House, Turner’s Thames-side residence at this time, is on the left and Syon House in the middle distance. For Robert Mylne’s Pavilion see especially folio 3 of the sketchbook (D05494). Hill directs attention to ‘a Claudian version of the same view’ in the Wey, Guildford sketchbook (Tate D06195; Turner Bequest XCVIII 11), but the present sketch is from a slightly different angle and excludes the east end of All Saints’ Church on the left while extending further away from Syon House on the right. A watercolour of a similar view is in the Hesperides (1) sketchbook (Tate D05784; Turner Bequest XCIII 11) and a close-up view presumed to be Sion Ferry House comes from the dismembered Thames from Reading to Walton sketchbook (Tate D05952: Turner Bequest XCV 48).