Joseph Mallord William Turner

The River Medina Seen through Trees, with Shipping and Cowes Beyond

1827

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In Tate Britain

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Cowes, the River Medina and Shipping
Medium
Gouache and pen and ink on paper
Dimensions
Support: 142 × 193 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D24841
Turner Bequest CCLX 5

Catalogue entry

This is among dozens of blue paper studies presumably made in connection with the Cowes Regatta events in the late summer of 1827; see the Introduction to this subsection for other views westwards across to Cowes from East Cowes, including others with a rural, wooded foreground.
Having been exhibited as a French subject in the nineteenth century, like several others in the present subsection this drawing was categorised in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory in one of the sections of works on blue paper ‘mostly connected with “French Rivers”’.1
1
See Finberg 1909, II, pp.806–13, CCLX, ‘Pencil and ink on blue paper: mostly connected with “French Rivers” series’, c.1830; but see Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.102, Warrell 1989, p.148 and Warrell 1999, pp.30, 253 note 84, linking this sheet to the Isle of Wight.
Technical notes:
There is fading to the centre of the sheet from prolonged exposure while on display.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed ?by John Ruskin in red ink ‘508’ bottom left.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

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