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 ... > Drawings Connected with the Kent and ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Landscape Composition with Ruined Castle and Distant Town 1798

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Landscape Composition with Ruined Castle and Distant Town’ 1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Landscape Composition with Ruined Castle and Distant Town 1798
D00724
Turner Bequest XXIX S
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 262 x 366 mm
Stamped in black ‘XXIX S’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner scholar C.F. Bell considered this a composition rather than the topographical record of an actual view,1 an interpretation that seems correct. The extensive, and rather implausible, town or even city visible beyond the foreground hill suggests that the design is related to the curious views of Blois and Tours, apparently partly copied from prints (Tate D00673, D00674; Turner Bequest XXVII L, M).

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

1
C.F. Bell (died 1966), undated MS note in a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.60.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Landscape Composition with Ruined Castle and Distant Town 1798 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-landscape-composition-with-ruined-castle-and-distant-town-r1174971, accessed 26 April 2024.