J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > Hesperides (1) Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Kew Palace and Bridge Seen through Trees, from the Middlesex Bank of the Thames 1805

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Kew Palace and Bridge Seen through Trees, from the Middlesex Bank of the Thames’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 38 Verso:
Kew Palace and Bridge Seen through Trees, from the Middlesex Bank of the Thames 1805
D05833
Turner Bequest XCIII 38a
Pen and ink and watercolour, with scratching out, on white wove paper, prepared with a grey wash, 171 x 262 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is one of a group of watercolour studies of Thames scenery that occupy some of the later folios of the sketchbook; others are 39 verso, 40 verso and 42 verso (D05835, D05837, D05840). See Introduction to the book for comment. Edward Croft-Murray, in a pencil annotation to a copy of Finberg in the Tate Library, was the first to recognise the subject as Kew. The new palace, designed by James Wyatt (begun 1801) appears on the right. Hill notes the similarities of viewpoint to a pencil and pen-and-ink sketch in the Studies for Pictures: Isleworth sketchbook (Tate D05505; Turner Bequest XC 11) and to a watercolour of about 1806–7 (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester).1 The Whitworth watercolour curtails the trees on the left while adding anglers on the riverbank, and extends it to the right of the palace. It is more finished, but clearly based on the present study.

David Blayney Brown
October 2007

1
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.346 no.413, as ‘Eton College, from the Thames’. For the correct identification see Craig Hartley, Turner Watercolours in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester 1984, pp.37–8 no.29.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Kew Palace and Bridge Seen through Trees, from the Middlesex Bank of the Thames 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2007, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-kew-palace-and-bridge-seen-through-trees-from-the-middlesex-r1130055, accessed 18 April 2024.