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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > Mortlake and Pulborough Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The House and Garden at 'The Limes', Mortlake ?1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The House and Garden at 'The Limes', Mortlake’ ?1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 44 Recto:
The House and Garden at ‘The Limes’, Mortlake ?1825
D18773
Turner Bequest CCXIII 44
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 187 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘4 [?P...]’ bottom centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘44’ bottom right (now very faint)
Stamped in black ‘CCXIII – 44’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
As has long been recognised,1 this drawing relates to the painting The Seat of William Moffatt Esq., at Mortlake. Early (Summer’s) Morning, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1826 (Frick Collection, New York);2 a companion piece, Mortlake Terrace, the Seat of William Moffatt, Esq. Summer’s Evening, was shown at the same venue the following year (National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).3 The most precise study for the morning view is on folio 11 recto (D18725), where profuse foliage is shown.
In the present drawing, made in less detail with a softer or blunter pencil, the focus is on the house and the trunks and branches of trees in front and to the right of it, away from the River Thames, perhaps suggesting a return visit to the garden of ‘The Limes’ at Mortlake in the autumn or winter of 1825–6; see also the related view on folio 43 verso (D18772). As discussed in the sketchbook’s Introduction, in between is the jagged stub of another leaf, possibly with signs of a further drawing, which would presumably have been a Mortlake view.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.649, Frick Collection, I, 1968, pp.131, 132 note 1, Butlin, Wilton and Gage 1974, p.103 and Butlin and Joll 1984, p.145.
2
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.144–5 no.235, pl.236 (colour).
3
Ibid., pp.147–8 no.239, pl.237 (colour).

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The House and Garden at ‘The Limes’, Mortlake ?1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-house-and-garden-at-the-limes-mortlake-r1172895, accessed 19 April 2024.