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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > First Italian Tour 1819-20 > Venice to Ancona Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Studies of Calves and a Cow; a Wagon 1819

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Studies of Calves and a Cow; a Wagon’ 1819
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Verso:
Studies of Calves and a Cow; a Wagon 1819
D14530
Turner Bequest CLXXVI 22a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 184 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Dun Brown | Claude’ above centre, on calf
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These studies of what may be aspects of a single calf, together with a cow’s head in profile, fall among the very few sketches after Turner’s leaving Venice until his arrival at Bologna; for Cecilia Powell’s comments, see under folio 21 verso (D14528).1 As James Hamilton has put it, ‘Turner refers to little except a charming drawing of a calf’,2 which may have been observed at the villa or farm shown on folio 23 recto opposite (D14531). This is the only page of animal drawings in this sketchbook; for a few figure studies, see under folio 1 recto (D14489). Studies of cattle feature here and there in Turner’s sketchbooks, including the self-explanatory Cows of about 1801 (Tate; Turner Bequest LXII) as potential elements of rural paintings.
Turner’s note on the central animal, ‘Dun Brown | Claude’, refers to the French, Rome-based artist Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), whom he greatly admired and often emulated in terms of his idealised, light-filled classical landscapes and harbour scenes;3 Claude was clearly on his mind as he moved south towards Rome, and here it is a rather mundane instance of colour rather than light that has evoked the comparison, presumably with the brown washes of Claude’s drawings and perhaps the ‘sepia’ tones of the engravings after his Liber Veritatis compositions which had been an important influence on Turner’s own printmaking (see the Introduction to the ‘Liber Studiorum c.1806–24’ section of the present catalogue). The artist would have to wait a little longer in his journey to encounter a landscape worthy of comparison with his forerunner’s, making an approving note of the ‘first bit of Claude’ below a hilly scene with distant buildings in his subsequent Ancona to Rome sketchbook (Tate D14663; Turner Bequest CLXXVII 6).
1
See Powell 1984, pp.82, 462 notes 62 and 63, and Powell 1987, pp.24, 202 note 39.
2
Hamilton 2009, p.42; see also Hamilton 2008, p.43.
3
See Ian Warrell and others, Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London 2012; see also Lindsay 1985, p.96, and Nicholson 1990, p.261 note 50 for other such notes.
Technical notes:
There are faint yellowish stains, which saturate the leaf and are apparently also offset on folio 21 verso (D14528); they also affect the following leaf before fading off at folio 24 recto (D14532).

Matthew Imms
March 2017

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Studies of Calves and a Cow; a Wagon 1819 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2017, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, July 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-studies-of-calves-and-a-cow-a-wagon-r1186265, accessed 28 May 2025.