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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Scotland 1801-10 > Chester Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Wagons and Figures, with a Pulley beside a River or Canal 1801

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Wagons and Figures, with a Pulley beside a River or Canal’ 1801
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 37 Recto:
Wagons and Figures, with a Pulley beside a River or Canal 1801
D05114
Turner Bequest LXXXII 37
Pencil on white wove paper, 161 x 256 mm
Watermark ‘1794’ (trimmed)
Inscribed in pencil ‘34’ bottom right, descending vertically
Blind–stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘37’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘LXXXII – 37’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This slight horizontal study is one of a series of drawings made by an industrial waterway, very possibly a canal; others follow on folios 38 recto and 39 recto (D05115, D05116).
It must be assumed from the context that the setting is somewhere in Lancashire or Cheshire, but attention is drawn to canal scenes made towards the beginning of Turner’s 1801 tour to the Highlands, probably near Leeds, in the disbound and dispersed Smaller Fonthill sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest XLVIII); they are listed in the Introduction to that book (in the ‘Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797–1807’ section of this catalogue) as nos.2–4: Barges on a River or Canal near a Mine (pencil, British Museum, London, 1946,1109.3); Industrial Machinery beside a River or Canal, with Barges (pencil, British Museum, 1946,1109.4); A Canal Tunnel near Leeds (watercolour, private collection).1
Another possible location for some of these studies is Parkgate on the Dee estuary (see also folio 46 recto; D05123), which Turner had visited on his Midland tour of 1794 and depicted in a small, untraced watercolour,2 engraved for Walker’s Copper–Plate Magazine in 1797 as Flint, from Park–Gate (Tate impressions: T05899–T05900).
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.336 no.325, pl.50, as c.1799.
2
Ibid., p.312 no.97.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Wagons and Figures, with a Pulley beside a River or Canal 1801 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-wagons-and-figures-with-a-pulley-beside-a-river-or-canal-r1178683, accessed 19 April 2024.