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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Colour Studies of the Sun, Skies and ... > Skies Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study of the Sun Rising or Setting over a Landscape c.1818

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study of the Sun Rising or Setting over a Landscape’ c.1818
Folio 42 Recto:
Study of the Sun Rising or Setting over a Landscape c.1818
D12490
Turner Bequest CLVIII 42
Watercolour on white wove paper, 125 x 247 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘42’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CLVIII – 42’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In this striking composition the sun, reserved as a blank disk of white paper, is shown low over an unidentifiable landscape. It is difficult to determine what time of day this sketch depicts, to discern whether the sun is rising or setting. There appears to be a body of water present in the foreground, reflecting some of the dark clouds floating above it. The vibrant but simultaneously subdued colours that make up this composition may reflect the unusual atmospheric conditions which followed the explosion of Mount Tabora in 1815. As David Blayney Brown has noted:
On 10 April 1815, Mount Tambora at Sumbawa in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) erupted in the most spectacular and devasting volcanic explosion in recorded history, throwing a plume of dust and gas into the atmosphere. For almost three years, skies around the world went dark or developed a baleful, infernal glow as the sun or moon struggled to break through. Crops failed; famine, cholera and typhus ran rampant, killing millions; riots and insurrection broke out in many countries, threatening anarchy, terrifying governments and creating an apocalyptic, millenarian mood to match the prevailing gloom.1
There are visual similarities between this page and the rectos of folios 45 and 54 (D12493, D12502), and also to some of the works featured in Matthew Imms’s parallel ‘Colour Studies of the Sun and Clouds at Dawn and Sunset c.1815–40’ subsection of the present catalogue.
1
Brown 2016, p.6
Verso:
Blank

Caitlin Doley
July 2024

How to cite

Caitlin Doley, ‘Study of the Sun Rising or Setting over a Landscape c.1818’, catalogue entry, July 2024, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, October 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/study-of-the-sun-rising-or-setting-over-a-landscape-r1208914, accessed 25 July 2025.