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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797 ... > Fonthill Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Fonthill: Woods by a Lake, with a Fallen Tree 1799

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fonthill: Woods by a Lake, with a Fallen Tree’ 1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Fonthill: Woods by a Lake, with a Fallen Tree 1799
D02225
Turner Bequest XLVII 48
Pencil and watercolour with stopping-out on white wove paper, 327 x 468 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram centre right
Inscribed in brown ink ‘100’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘XLVII 48’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the page turned horizontally, this is one of a series of studies of trees and bushes, apparently made in the grounds of Fonthill while Turner was there in 1799, preparing for his set of views of the house, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1800 (private collection; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Montréal Museum of Fine Arts; National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester).1 Some occur in the Swans sketchbook (Tate D01681–D01682, D01691–D01694; Turner Bequest XLII 6–7, 16–17, 18–19); others are in the present book (D02191, D02192 D02197; Turner Bequest XLVII 14, 15, 20).
The motif of the arched trunk of a fallen tree seems to have appealed to Turner, and stimulated him to romantic and dramatic invention: he presumably borrowed it from this drawing for a feature in the small oil sketch known as Landscape with Lake and Fallen Tree (Tate N03557),2 which contains a supine nude figure that links it with The Fifth Plague of Egypt (Indianapolis Museum of Art),3 also shown at the Academy in 1800.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.338 nos.335–339, reproduced, and pl.53.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.31 no.39, pl.35.
3
Ibid., pp.10–12 no.13, pl.10 (colour).
Technical notes:
The mottled texture of the brown pigment in some areas of the drawing may have been achieved by mixing the colour with gum arabic. For a proposed sequence for the leaves of the disbound Fonthill sketchbook, with this page as folio 9, see the Introduction.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Fonthill: Woods by a Lake, with a Fallen Tree 1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, 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-fonthill-woods-by-a-lake-with-a-fallen-tree-r1174225, accessed 26 April 2024.