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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Folkestone and the Medway c.1821-2 > Folkestone Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The River Medway, at Rochester c.1821-2

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The River Medway, at Rochester’ c.1821-2
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 81 Verso:
The River Medway, at Rochester c.1821–2
D17346
Turner Bequest CXCVIII 81a
Pencil on white wove paper, 113 x 187 mm
Partial watermark ‘T Edm | 18’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Continuing with the subject explored on the previous page, folio 81 recto (D17345), here Turner describes a view of Rochester in Kent as observed from the southwest.1 At right is the distinctive tower of Rochester Castle, with the bridge across the river Medway clearly visible to its left. Turner seems likely to have recorded this view immediately prior to structural alterations made to the medieval bridge in the 1820s provoked by concerns about silt deposits in the riverbed.2 Much of the page is blank, and in fact very little attention is paid to the river itself in this drawing, which lends its focus to the architectural forms which shape the landscape.
For a list of the other pages in the present sketchbook which consider the subject of Rochester, see the entry for folio 6 verso (D17217).

Maud Whatley
January 2016

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.606.
2
‘The Bridges at Rochester’, The Rochester Bridge Trust, http://www.rbt.org.uk/bridges/index.htm, accessed 18 November 2015.

How to cite

Maud Whatley, ‘The River Medway, at Rochester c.1821–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 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-the-river-medway-at-rochester-r1184620, accessed 25 April 2024.