Tintern: The Ruined Gatehouse of the Abbey, from the Wye

1798

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Hereford Court Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 229 x 332 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D01333
Turner Bequest XXXVIII 79

Catalogue entry

Turner had made careful drawings of the impressive ruins of Tintern Abbey on his first visit to the Wye Valley in 1792 (Tate D00131–D00134; Turner Bequest XII B, C, D, E), and worked them up into a group of fine watercolours (Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; two at the British Museum, London; Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon);1 see also Tate D00374 (Turner Bequest XXIII A). He evidently did not feel the need to add to the notes he already possessed of the architecture of the principal building, and so on this and the following page, folio 18 recto (D01263; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 13), contented himself with more general views, drawn with the page turned horizontally.

In 1909 Finberg suggested that this page, then loose, was ‘Probably p.47 a’,2 that is to say originally between the present folios 77 recto and 79 recto (D01301, D01302; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 47, 48); D01325 (Turner Bequest XXXVIII 71) has subsequently been bound in there as folio 78 recto.

Respectively Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.307 nos.57–61, all but the last reproduced.

Finberg 1909, I, p.88; see also p.86.

Verso:

Blank; not stamped.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

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