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 > Wey, Guildford Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Near Isleworth: Trees by a River with a Distant Building 1805

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Near Isleworth: Trees by a River with a Distant Building’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Recto:
?Near Isleworth: Trees by a River with a Distant Building 1805
D06194
Turner Bequest XCVIII 10
Pen and ink and reddish-brown wash on white laid paper, 117 x 182 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘10’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘XCVIII 10’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Wilkinson comments that this subject, ‘whatever it was intended for, is unmistakable English parkland’. Edward Croft-Murray, in pencil annotations to a copy of Finberg in Tate’s Library, states ‘Thames near Isleworth’, the most likely location. Butlin and Joll, followed by Hill, compare the arrangement of the trees to the contemporary, unfinished oil Trees Beside the River, with Bridge in the Middle Distance (Tate N02692)1 which is in turn related to drawings in the Studies for Pictures: Isleworth sketchbook to which Turner added classical and mythological elements (Tate D05577, D05579; Turner Bequest XC 55, 56). While these connections are circumstantial, as Hill observes, they suggest a common origin in familiar Thames scenery and also Turner’s tendency to idealise it or give it a neo-classical character; Hill describes the present drawing as ‘Liber-ised’ on comparison with such scenes in the Liber Studiorum and following on folios 11, 12, 13 and 14 (D06195, D06196, D06197, D06198).
1
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.118 no.169 (pl.169).
Verso:
Blank

David Blayney Brown
July 2008

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘?Near Isleworth: Trees by a River with a Distant Building 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2008, 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-near-isleworth-trees-by-a-river-with-a-distant-building-r1130378, accessed 19 April 2024.