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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Northern Germany, the Elbe and Prague ... > Copenhagen to Dresden Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Two Paintings in the Dresden Picture Gallery: Correggio, 'Madonna with St Sebastian'; Watteau, 'Conversation in the Open Air' 1835

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Two Paintings in the Dresden Picture Gallery: Correggio, 'Madonna with St Sebastian'; Watteau, 'Conversation in the Open Air'’ 1835
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Verso
Two Paintings in the Dresden Picture Gallery: Correggio, 'Madonna with St Sebastian'; Watteau, 'Conversation in the Open Air' 1835
D31031
Turner Bequest CCCVII 6 a
Pencil on cream laid paper, 162 x 89 mm
Watermark double X mark and ‘cfw & s’
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ‘Yell Glory’, ‘Blue’, ‘Y’, ‘Red Light’, ‘[?Green]’, ‘Blue’, ‘Or’, ‘Gold’, ‘Gre’, ‘P[...]’ (around ‘Madonna with St Sebastian’); ‘L B’, ‘Yellow’, ‘Light Yellow’, ‘[...]’, ‘P W’, ‘B Y Stripes’, ‘[...] L[...]’, ‘Lilack’, ‘Red Yellow | the Key’, ‘W V’ (around ‘Conversation in a Park’)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Rendered inversely to one another, these are rough copies of two paintings Turner saw at the Dresden Picture Gallery (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister). They are Antonio da Correggio (1489–1534) Madonna with St Sebastian (1524) and Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) Conversation in the Open Air (1718/19). Colour notes are inscribed around the paintings to remind the artist of their brilliant chromatic displays: ‘Or’ (‘gold’ in French), ‘W[hite] V[ine], ‘Lilack’, ‘B[lue] Y[ellow] Stripes’, ‘P[ink]’, ‘Yel[low] Glory’, L[ight] B[lue]’.
See also Tate D31030, D31032–D31033; Turner Bequest CCCVII 6, 7–7a.

Alice Rylance-Watson
May 2015

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘Two Paintings in the Dresden Picture Gallery: Correggio, 'Madonna with St Sebastian'; Watteau, 'Conversation in the Open Air' 1835 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2017, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-two-paintings-in-the-dresden-picture-gallery-correggio-r1186904, accessed 25 April 2024.