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 > Studies for Pictures: Isleworth ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Thames from Richmond Hill, Looking West 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Thames from Richmond Hill, Looking West’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 22 Recto:
The Thames from Richmond Hill, Looking West 1805
D05522
Turner Bequest XC 22
Pen and ink on off-white wove paper, prepared with a grey wash, 150 x 258 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘22’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘XC 22’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view is upstream, over the Petersham meadows and towards Marble Hill and Twickenham. Hill notes that this is one of four views from Richmond Hill seen through trees; the others are on folios 23, 25 and 25 (D05523, D05524, D05526). He speculates on Turner’s ‘difficulty seeing the views for the trees’1 and imagines him ‘measuring the extent to which the reality of Richmond conformed to the ideal’2 of classical landscape as represented by Claude Lorrain.

David Blayney Brown
August 2007

1
Hill 1993, p.161.
2
Ibid., p.56.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘The Thames from Richmond Hill, Looking West 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 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-the-thames-from-richmond-hill-looking-west-r1129833, accessed 23 September 2024.