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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Severn Valley, Chester and Peak District ... > Worcester and Shrewsbury Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Chester and the River Dee from the East ?1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Chester and the River Dee from the East’ ?1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 62 Verso:
Chester and the River Dee from the East ?1831
D22266
Turner Bequest CCXXXIX 62a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 191 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘4 5 4 [?V W...]’ top centre, ‘[?7]’ towards top right, ‘3’ and ‘w’ right of centre, and ‘R[...]’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This prospect, inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, was identified as ‘all Chester’ by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) and the watercolour and Turner scholar C.F. Bell (died 1966) in undated manuscript notes in copies of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory,1 where the subject had rather discursively been suggested as Shrewsbury (see under folio 12 verso; D22172), or even Durham, a Turner subject on other occasions. As Ian Warrell has noted, Grosvenor Bridge is in the distance,2 to the west down the River Dee beyond the Old Dee Bridge and Chester Castle on the opposite bank. The viewpoint is in the neighbourhood of the later Victoria Crescent. Compare the sketch from a lower position on folio 63 recto opposite (D22267).
For other views of Chester, see under folio 14 verso (D22176).

Matthew Imms
April 2014

1
A.J. Finberg, undated MS notes in a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.II, p.735; C.F. Bell, undated MS notes in another copy at the same location, vol.II, p.735.
2
Ian Warrell, notes from 1993 and later in Tate catalogue files.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Chester and the River Dee from the East ?1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-chester-and-the-river-dee-from-the-east-r1148912, accessed 26 April 2024.