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 > River and Margate Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner River Scene off Gravesend c.1805-9

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘River Scene off Gravesend’ c.1805-9
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 67 Verso:
River Scene off Gravesend circa 1805–9
D06468
Turner Bequest XCIX 63a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 115 x 190 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. Finberg, identifying the subject, notes also ‘See picture of “Gravesend” described in a letter to Sir John Leicester of Dec., 1810’. Turner’s letter, of 12 December,1 lists marine subjects that the artist currently has available and also provides thumbnail sketches of them. ‘Gravesend’ is said to be five feet wide and to need ‘lining and a weeks work’. The sketch is recognisably of the same composition as seen here, with the same prominent sun low in the sky. If this leaf is folded to overlap 66 verso (D06466; Turner Bequest XCIX 62a), also of Gravesend, so that its right edge meets a vertical line drawn in pencil, an expanded version of the composition appears, with barges on the extreme right, that is even closer to the sketch in the letter. The picture is now untraced.2

David Blayney Brown
March 2009

1
John Gage ed., Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner, Oxford 1980, p.44 reproduced.
2
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.127 no.206.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘River Scene off Gravesend c.1805–9 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2009, 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-river-scene-off-gravesend-r1130664, accessed 19 September 2024.