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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Brighton and Copies from Wilson 1796-7 > Wilson Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Soldiers in Historical Costume Resting 1796-7

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Soldiers in Historical Costume Resting’ 1796-7
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 5 Verso:
Soldiers in Historical Costume Resting 1796–7
D01127
Turner Bequest XXXVII 10
Pen and brown ink, brush and black ink, watercolour and gouache on blue laid wrapping paper prepared with a red-brown wash, 113 x 93 mm
Stamped in black ‘XXXVII – 10’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
These figures, which owe much to the ‘banditti’ that appear in the landscapes of Salvator Rosa (1615–1673) and his imitators, may be connected with a projected picture, possibly ‘Hannibal showing his Army the Fertile Plains of Italy’, which was never executed. In 1776 John Robert Cozens (1752–1797) had exhibited his only oil painting at the Royal Academy, with the title A Landscape with Hannibal in his march over the Alps, showing to his Army the fertile Plains of Italy. It was ‘so fine that Turner spoke of it as a work from which he had learned more than anything he had ever seen’.1 Turner’s famous canvas Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps of 1812 (Tate N00490)2 is the culmination of this line of influence; in about 1798 he made a pencil drawing of the subject in his Dinevor Castle sketchbook (Tate D01576; Turner Bequest XL 67).
There is a slight continuation of this drawing on folio 6 recto opposite (D01128; Turner Bequest XXXVII 11).

Andrew Wilton
September 2012

1
C.R. Leslie, A Handbook for Young Painters, London 1855, p. 267; see also Lynn R. Matteson, ‘The Poetics and Politics of Alpine Passage’: Turner’s Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps’, Art Bulletin, vol.67, no.3, 1980, pp.386–7).
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.88–90 no.126, pl.131 (colour).

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Soldiers in Historical Costume Resting 1796–7 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-soldiers-in-historical-costume-resting-r1149819, accessed 20 May 2024.