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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Italianate Landscapes and Classical ... > Colour Studies of Idealised Italianate ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Classical Buildings beside a Bridge c.1828-9

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Classical Buildings beside a Bridge’ c.1828-9
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Classical Buildings beside a Bridge c.1828–9
D25197
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 75
Watercolour on white wove paper, 312 x 485 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram below centre
Inscribed in red ink ‘75’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 75’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This radiant ‘colour beginning’, with its loosely defined architectural forms suggesting columns and entablatures, has not been linked to any completed composition. It evokes the idealised light of Italy, mediated by Turner’s admiration for the seaport compositions of Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), whom Turner greatly admired and often emulated.1
For example there is a presumably fortuitous general resemblance to the scene in the watercolour Florence, from the Ponte alla Carraia of about 1816–17 (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester),2 engraved in 1818 for Hakewill’s Italy (Tate impression: T06026), or the quayside scenes in the major paintings Dido Building Carthage; or the Rise of the Carthaginian Empire, exhibited in 1815 (Turner Bequest, National Gallery, London)3 and The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, shown in 1817 (Tate N00499).4
For consistency, the present sheet is here dated to about1828–9 in line with various idealised colour studies in this section likely made around the time of Turner’s second Italian tour.
1
See Ian Warrell and others, Turner Inspired: In the Light of Claude, exhibition catalogue, National Gallery, London 2012.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.382 no.713, reproduced.
3
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.94–6 no.131, pl.133 (colour).
4
Ibid., pp.100–1 no.135, pl.137 (colour).
Technical notes:
Pale lines running across the sheet may indicate water damage from the 1928 Tate Gallery flood.
Verso:
Blank; laid down.

Matthew Imms
August 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Classical Buildings beside a Bridge c.1828–9 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, March 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-classical-buildings-beside-a-bridge-r1185712, accessed 11 May 2024.