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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Studies Related to Oil Paintings c.1819 ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Gothic Archway c.1827-30

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Gothic Archway’ c.1827-30
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
A Gothic Archway c.1827–30
D34833
Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 350v
Pencil on white laid paper, 159 x 201 mm
Watermark ‘John | Hall’
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This slight rendering of Gothic tracery within a shallow pointed arch, over a horizontal element perhaps indicating a doorway, may have been drawn from an actual building or from imagination or recollection. The slight supplementary details above and to the right appear incidental enough to suggest a real source, as yet unidentified.
The drawing is here dated to about 1827–30 by association with the more developed figure study on its recto (Tate D34832; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 350). The two are inverted relative to each other. Compare another loose drawing of an arch and tracery, made on 1827 paper, and sequenced consecutively with this one in Finberg’s 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory (Tate D34834; Turner Bequest CCCXLIV 351) without further comment.1
1
See Finberg 1909, II, p.1141.
Technical notes:
The flattened-out sheet originated in a notebook. Stitch holes are evident down the centre, appearing more prominent and darkened on this side as compared to the recto.

Matthew Imms
August 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Gothic Archway c.1827–30 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, February 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-gothic-archway-r1184443, accessed 26 April 2024.