Joseph Mallord William Turner A Bridge in a Wooded Valley, with Cattle c.1820-40
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
A Bridge in a Wooded Valley, with Cattle
c.1820-40
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
A Bridge in a Wooded Valley, with Cattle c.1820–40
D25235
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 113
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 113
Watercolour on white wove paper, 309 x 492 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Gall and Aqua Fortis’ bottom right, and in watercolour ‘GAF’ bottom left
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘113’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 113’ bottom right
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Gall and Aqua Fortis’ bottom right, and in watercolour ‘GAF’ bottom left
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘113’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 113’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1934
Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, March 1934 onwards (no catalogue, but numbered 25).
1971
Victoria and Albert Museum Circulation Department Conservation Studio, London, ?1971 (no catalogue).
1993
J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Impressions de Gran Bretanya i el Continent Europeu / Impresiones de Gran Bretaña y el Continente Europeo, Centre Cultural de la Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona, September–November 1993, Sala de Exposiciones de la Fundación ”la Caixa”, Madrid, November 1993–January 1994 (62, reproduced in colour, as ‘A Bridge, with Cattle Seated beside a River’, c.1825–30).
1994
J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Aquarelles et Dessins du Legs Turner: Collection de la Tate Gallery, Londres / Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest: Collection from the Tate Gallery, London, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi, September–December 1994 62, reproduced in colour, as ‘A Bridge, with Cattle Seated beside a River’, c.1825–30).
2007
Hockney on Turner Watercolours, Tate Britain, London, June 2007–February 2008 (not in catalogue, as ‘Bridge, with Cattle’).
References
1820
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.823, CCLXIII 113, as ‘Bridge, with cattle’, with transcription, c.1820–30.
1825
Ian Warrell, J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Impressions de Gran Bretanya i el Continent Europeu / Impresiones de Gran Bretaña y el Continente Europeo, exhibition catalogue, Centre Cultural de la Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona 1993, pp.192, 278 no.62, reproduced in colour p.193, as ‘A Bridge, with Cattle Seated beside a River’, c.1825–30.
1825
Ian Warrell, J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Aquarelles et Dessins du Legs Turner: Collection de la Tate Gallery, Londres / Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest: Collection from the Tate Gallery, London, exhibition catalogue, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi 1994, p.194 no.62, reproduced in colour p.[195], as ‘A Bridge, with Cattle Seated beside a River’, c.1825–30).
1997
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Watercolour Explorations 1810–1842, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.94 Appendix I ‘Devonshire’, 102 Appendix I ‘Thames Views, from Chelsea to Hampton’, 103 Appendix I ‘Wales?’.
Although this may be a generic composition, Ian Warrell has noted the possibility that it represents or recalls ‘one of the fast flowing rivers in either Yorkshire or Devon’1 which Turner knew well, respectively from early in his career and many subsequent visits, and from tours in the early 1810s. Eric Shanes has suggested a Welsh subject, comparable with the painting Trout Fishing in the Dee, Corwen Bridge and Cottage, exhibited at Turner’s gallery in 1809 (Taft Museum, Cincinnati),2 and related pencil studies in the 1808 Tabley No.2 sketchbook (Tate D06893, D06914; Turner Bequest CIV 28a, 44a).3
Of these, D06914 is most comparable in its juxtaposition of cows and bridge, although (assuming the similarity is not fortuitous) the present study departs somewhat from the topographical drawing, and it may be that Turner enlarged on the sketch to develop a more generalised composition. The sense of the bridge being fleetingly partly in sunlight and partly in shade is comparable with the seemingly spontaneous effect in a watercolour study of Kew Bridge from the 1805 Thames, from Reading to Walton sketchbook (Tate D05946; Turner Bequest XCV 42). Within the present section, there are also bridges in Tate D25223 and D25493 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 101, 370).
The immediate significance of Turner’s apparent pencil note ‘Gall and Aqua Fortis’, repeated in watercolour as ‘GAF’, is unclear. There is a list of materials required for making etchings in the back of the 1796 Studies near Brighton sketchbook (Tate D40761), including Aqua Fortis (nitric acid); see also the potted notes on Tate D40213, the back of a Royal Academy student drawing of about 1792. ‘Gall’ in this instance may refer to the parasitical growths on oak or other trees traditionally collected to produce iron gall ink,4 and the note may be a memorandum of information the artist had recently heard or read. For instance, there are technical articles mentioning the two materials in the context of dying processes in an encyclopaedia of 18105 and a periodical of 1816.6
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.68 no.92, pl.102 (colour).
‘Specification of the Patent Granted to Samuel John Smith, of Gaythorne, Manchester, in the County of Lancaster, Dyer; for an Improved Method of Staining, Printing, or Dying, on Silk, Woollen, Cotton, Yarn, or Goods Manufactured of Cotton’, The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, second series, vol.28, no.158, April 1816, pp.259–61; for some examples of Turner’s miscellaneous sources, see Matthew Imms, ‘Not “quite out of his province”? Some New Identifications of Turner’s Working Notes’, Turner Society News, no.116, Autumn 2011, pp.3–6.
Technical notes:
Turner loosely defied the lying cattle on the left with watercolour outlines, leaving their shapes reserved as blank paper while filling one in beyond as a brown silhouette. The right-hand edge of the bridge was also left bare, while the pale dappled foliage beyond the bridge was either lifted out with the tip of a wet brush or masked with gum after the initial washes. The divisions of the voussoirs radiating from the second arch have also been similarly defined in this way.
As Ian Warrell has observed:
Unfinished watercolours such as this provide the opportunity to understand Turner’s working methods a little more clearly. For example, the area of the paper meant to indicate a bridge has been left clean. At a later stage Turner would have added delicate washes in order to convey the effect of light on warm stone.1
Verso:
Blank, save for a scribbled pencil test at the top left; inscribed by John Ruskin in pencil ‘AB 93 P | O’ bottom right; inscribed in pencil ‘CCLXIII. 113’ bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCLXIII – 113’ bottom left.
Matthew Imms
December 2015
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘A Bridge in a Wooded Valley, with Cattle c.1820–40 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www