Joseph Mallord William Turner

The Tower of London from the River Thames

c.1823–4

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment
Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
River Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 111 × 190 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D17811
Turner Bequest CCIV 30

Catalogue entry

Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, this slight sketch shows the skyline of the Tower of London, seen to the north-east, with the White Tower in the distance above St Thomas’s Tower and the waterfront Traitors’ Gate. This is one of a number of sketches which informed Turner’s watercolour of the Tower of about 1825 (private collection),1 as discussed in the entry for folio 34 recto (D17819), the closest to the finished design. There is another view of the fortress from a similar angle on folio 29 verso opposite (D17810).
For other London and Thames views, see under folio 2 recto (D17775).
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.358 no.515.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
November 2014

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