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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Likely English, Scottish or Welsh ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sunset Study, Probably for 'Flint Castle' c.1820-30

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sunset Study, Probably for 'Flint Castle'’ c.1820-30
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Sunset Study, Probably for ‘Flint Castle’ c.1820–30
D35986
Turner Bequest CCCLXIV 143
Watercolour on white wove paper, 274 x 375 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘143’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCLXIV – 143’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The empty landscape of this ‘colour beginning’, with the sun low over a purple horizon and reflected in a watery foreground, appears to relate directly to the setting and effect in the finished watercolour known as Welsh Coast near Flint Castle, possibly of about 1830 or some years earlier (private collection),1 where the castle appears in silhouette to the right of the sun and the foreground is animated with boats, figures, horses, a buoy and an array of fish lying on the wet beach of the Dee Estuary at low tide.2
The composition is a loose variation on the theme of the watercolour Flint Castle, North Wales of about 1834–5 (National Museum Wales, Cardiff),3 engraved in 1836 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T05873, T06121); Tate D36319 (CCCLXV 28) is possibly a study for it. Turner had known and depicted the castle since the 1790s; see under Tate D02013 (Turner Bequest XLVI 14) for other treatments.4
Here the direct focus on the low sun over water evokes Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), whom Turner greatly admired and often emulated;5 compare similar studies, not associated with particular compositions, in the ‘Sun and Clouds at Dawn and Sunset’ subsection of the present author’s ‘Colour Studies of the Sun, Skies and Clouds c.1815–45’ elsewhere in this catalogue.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.403–4 no.885, as ?c.1830, reproduced; but see Eric Shanes, Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales 1825–1838, London 1979, p.152 no.89 as simply ‘Flint Castle’, early 1820s, Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, p.247 under no.212, as 1820s, and Shanes 1997, p.15, also as 1820s; note that Shanes 1979, p.152, emphasises that it was ‘not made’ for the England and Wales scheme, while Shanes 1990, p.286 note 194, specifically rules out a connection, owing to ‘documentary evidence’.
2
The link seems to have first been published in the anonymous checklist of Sketching the Sky: Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1995, p.[7], and an associated display caption (still part of the present work’s on-line entry at time of writing).
3
Wilton 1979, p.401 no.868, reproduced.
4
See also Shanes 1997, p.43.
5
See for example Ian Warrell and others, Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London 2012.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed by ?John Ruskin in pencil ‘AB 144 P | O’ bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCCLXIV – 143’ towards bottom right.

Matthew Imms
August 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Sunset Study, Probably for ‘Flint Castle’ c.1820–30 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-sunset-study-probably-for-flint-castle-r1184472, accessed 19 April 2024.