The Thames Valley from Richmond Hill

c.1825

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Thames Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 114 x 188 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D18605
Turner Bequest CCXII 6 a

Catalogue entry

This slight sketch looking west over the River Thames from Richmond Hill is a reprise of the one on folio 5 verso (D18603), under other views in this sketchbook and related works are discussed. Here Turner seems to have made a note of someone carrying milk up the steep slope of Nightingale Lane or the hill itself.

The present drawing is among those which would have generally informed two watercolours: Richmond Hill of about 1825 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight),1 engraved in 1826 for the Literary Souvenir (Tate impression: T06132); and Richmond Terrace, Surrey of about 1836 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool),2 engraved in 1838 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T04611, T06128). The framing devices of a building on the left (The Wick) and trees in the foreground on the right are seen in the England and Wales design.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.359 no.518, pl.135; see also Shanes 2000, p.180.

Wilton 1979, p.403 no.879, reproduced; see also Shanes 1979, p.156, and Shanes 2004, p.128.

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