Joseph Mallord William Turner

View on Clapham Common

c.1800–5

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Not on display

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Medium: Oil paint on wood
Dimensions: Support: 321 × 445 mm
frame: 545 × 680 × 80 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: N00468

Display caption

This title was used for the first time after Turner’s death. Although there is little to link the view to a specific location, a Victorian newspaper report claimed to identify it as Clapham Common. By then, the pond had been filled in, leading to doubts on the accuracy of the location. Fishing was one of Turner’s favourite pastimes and appears in many of his paintings and watercolours.

Gallery label, February 2019

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Catalogue entry

42. [N00468] View on Clapham Common c. 1800–02

THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (468)
Mahogany, 12 5/8 × 17 7/16 (32 × 44·5)

Coll. Turner Bequest 1856 (95, ‘Study of Trees’ 1'5" × 1'0"); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1910.

Exh. Amsterdam, Berne, Paris, Brussels, Liege (3), Venice and Rome (4), 1947–8 (repr.).

Lit. Ruskin 1857 (1903–12, xiii, pp. 103–4, 135, 142–3); Armstrong 1902, pp. 49, 220, repr. facing p. 46; MacColl 1920, p. 4; Davies 1946, p. 187; Herrmann 1963, p. 12, pl. 3; Wilton 1979, p. 256.

Apparently painted partly when already framed, a strip 5/8 in. along the bottom edge being only roughly laid in. Ruskin however attributes this to the picture's having been left unfinished.

The title and a dating of c. 1802 first appear in Ruskin's account of the Turners exhibited at Marlborough House in 1856. Much less Wilsonian than paintings of the late 1790s the painting yet lacks the freedom and atmosphere of the Thames oil sketches and watercolours of c. 1806–7 (see Nos. 160–94 and, e.g., the watercolour from the Turner Bequest, XCV-46, repr. exh. cat., B.M. 1975, p. 40 no. 34 and, in colour, Wilkinson 1974, p. 77). A closer parallel is Chevening Park painted in oil and gum on paper, one of the studies done when Turner was staying with W.F. Wells at Knockholt (No. 35g); Finberg dated these c. 1806 but for reasons for dating them c. 1801 see the introduction to Nos. 35a-f on pp. 25–7.

Published in:
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984