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

Although Finberg described this as a sunset scene,1 the relatively muted colour behind the silhouetted tower and hills seems to evoke a dawn effect, as Ian Warrell has suggested.2 Noting the 1825 watermark, Andrew Wilton proposed a link to the ‘Little Liber’ compositions around that time,3 with their concern for strong effects of light and shade (see the ‘Little Liber c.1823–6’ section of the present catalogue), while Warrell has noted that the ‘silhouetting of the tower ... points to the underlying habit in Turner’s compositions to seek the contre-jour effect to heighten the contrast with the skies depicted’.4

Gerald Wilkinson remarked: ‘Not much of a hill and not much of a sunset. This drawing is like, but much larger than, some of the sketches for vignettes.’5 Eric Shanes developed this idea, comparing the scene to that of a back-lit classical fragment in the bleak setting of The Campagna of Rome,6 a vignette watercolour of about 1826–7 (Tate D27678; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 161),7 engraved for the 1830 edition of Samuel Rogers’s Poems (Tate impressions: T04655–T04656), informed by Turner’s travels in the area in 1819.

Technical notes:

There is a red stroke of watercolour at the bottom centre, which may be a colour test, albeit for one not apparently used in the composition. The centre of the sheet has darkened from prolonged display, when its wide margins were protected by a mount, the composition being cropped by pencil lines all around it.1

Verso:

Blank