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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Midlands 1794-1802 > Matlock Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bridgnorth: The Bridge and Gatehouse 1794

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bridgnorth: The Bridge and Gatehouse’ 1794
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 20 Recto:
Bridgnorth: The Bridge and Gatehouse 1794
D00227
Turner Bequest XIX 19
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 181 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘X’ in various parts of the drawing
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘19’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XIX 19’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The present bridge over the River Severn at Bridgnorth dates from 1823. It replaced a much older structure which, with its picturesque toll-house, had admirers among antiquarian topographers and travellers passing through the town on the road from London to North Wales; Turner’s colleague Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) made a memorably Sublime watercolour of it in 1802 (based on a drawing of perhaps 1798); this is in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, London.1
Turner made another drawing of the bridge on folio 21 recto (D00228; Turner Bequest XIX 20) from which he derived a watercolour to be engraved for the Copper-Plate Magazine.
1
Greg Smith, Peter Bower, Anne Lyles and others, Thomas Girtin: The Art of Watercolour, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2002, pp.230–1 no.179, reproduced in colour.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in black ink with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Bridgnorth: The Bridge and Gatehouse 1794 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2012, 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-bridgnorth-the-bridge-and-gatehouse-r1140747, accessed 24 April 2024.