Joseph Mallord William Turner

The River Thames, Marlow Bridge, Church, Weir and Mill from near the Lock

1805

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Thames, from Reading to Walton Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 259 × 367 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D05906
Turner Bequest XCV 2

Catalogue entry

This was a right-hand page from the sketchbook. The fairly quick sketch of Marlow is taken from the top of the lock looking over the weir and indicates the weather, showing cumulus clouds from the north-west. The wooden ‘New Bridge’ seen here, with its twelve supporting piers as noted by Turner, was a recent structure in 1805. Samuel Ireland describes it as ‘the best object as a wooden bridge that I remember to have seen’ with ‘balustrades ... painted white, in imitation of stone-work’.1 It was to be replaced by the present iron suspension bridge in 1835. The church shown here is also a different building today. The inn on the left, then the Angler’s Rest, is now the Compleat Angler.
Turner made another drawing in this sketchbook looking back towards Marlow from Winter Hill, about a mile downstream (D05907; Turner Bequest XCV 3).
1
Samuel Ireland, Picturesque Views on the River Thames, London 1792, vol.I, p.171.
Verso:
Blank. Laid down.

David Blayney Brown
January 2009

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