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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North Wales 1799-1801 > Dolbadarn Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Figures on a Barge on a River near a Bridge under a Sunset Sky 1799

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Figures on a Barge on a River near a Bridge under a Sunset Sky’ 1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 37 Recto:
Figures on a Barge on a River near a Bridge under a Sunset Sky 1799
D02047
Turner Bequest XLVI 37
Pencil on white wove paper, 79 x 130 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘G Yellow’ top right, ‘Red’ right of centre, and ‘one silver streak under Bridge | sky [?light] Grey windy at the Bottom till nr [?Barge] moon [?glimering]’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘37’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘XLVI – 37’ bottom left, descending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg suggested1 that this drawing shows London Bridge, but the much lower and more regular sequence of arches indicates a different structure, and one probably not in the metropolis. The fine eighteenth-century Skerton Bridge at Lancaster, built by Thomas Harrison of Chester in 1783–8, might have attracted Turner’s attention as he passed through the town on his way to or from Kirby Lonsdale, but its proportions are again perhaps too grand. The somewhat unusual technique of soft pencil is comparable to that employed in drawings of Caernarvon Castle later in this book (see folios 49 verso–52 recto; D02069–D02074), and it seems likely that the bridge is a Welsh one.
1
A.J. Finberg (died 1939), undated MS note in copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, p.116.
Verso:
Blank; washed with a pale blue-grey ground.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Figures on a Barge on a River near a Bridge under a Sunset Sky 1799 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-figures-on-a-barge-on-a-river-near-a-bridge-under-a-sunset-r1179906, accessed 23 April 2024.