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

This luminous ‘colour beginning’, with trees overlooking a stretch of water with a high tower, was linked by Finberg1 to a major mythological painting set beside Lake Avernus, The Golden Bough, which was exhibited in 1834 (Tate N00371); in this he followed the description bestowed when the sheet was selected for display at the National Gallery in the late nineteenth century.2 Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll accepted the connection without further comment in their discussion of the painting.3

While there are similarities in the placing of trees on the right and high ground receding to the left above water, such elements are generic in Turner’s Italianate, idealised scenes, as demonstrated by the selection of similar compositions in the present subsection. Compare the central sun and contre-jour effect in Tate D24446 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 323), for example, which ultimately derive from Turner’s admiration for Claude Lorrain’s paintings (see the subsection’s Introduction). The lighting in the 1834 painting is bright enough, but somewhat pearly and diffuse compared with the warm dawn or sunset effect produced here. Andrew Wilton has called this scene a ‘variant’ of The Golden Bough, in the sense of being ‘similar to many colour-beginnings of classical landscapes ... which may relate to several such pictures from the Bay of Baiae onwards.’4 That large, strongly back-lit painting was exhibited in 1823 as The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl (Tate N00505),5 in the wake of Turner’s revelatory 1819 Italian tour.

Eric Shanes initially declared that the present work related ‘very definitely’6 to the idealised watercolour (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven)7 engraved in 1827 as Barnard Castle, Durham for Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T04517–T04518). He subsequently suggested it instead as one of several ‘possible or certain sketches and studies’8 for the watercolour Lake Albano of about 1828 (private collection),9 engraved for The Keepsake in 1829 (Tate impressions: T04614, T04615), although of those he mentioned Tate D25447 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 324) appears the strongest contender. Ian Warrell has suggested Lake Nemi as another possible setting, while observing ‘how Turner’s borrowed compositional devices could serve just as well for his English subjects’ in another northern England and Wales subject, Prudhoe Castle, Northumberland (British Museum, London),10 engraved in 1828 (Tate impressions: T04525, T04536).11

Noting these potential links, Cecilia Powell has remarked of this ‘vaporous colour sketch’ with its ‘quintessentially Claudian composition’: ‘Thus the relationships between the Claudian heritage and Turner’s own practice are never simple and one-to-one; they criss-cross and intertwine in the most intricate way, like a multi-dimensional spider’s web.’12 The present work is dated here to about the time of Turner’s second tour of Italy,13 which had been preceded by work on various Italian views for The Keepsake, including the view of Lake Albano mentioned above.14

A 1905 monochrome photographic reproduction15 is remarkable in showing a crowded array of pale figures standing and reclining in the left foreground and details below the trees including the arch of a bridge, apparently applied in chalk over the watercolour washes. Two of the figures can still just be made out against the shadowy bank and reflection below the tower, while there is a faint hint of one end of the bridge to the left of the trees. It is unclear whether these dusty deposits have been lost in the subsequent century simply through lack of adhesion or being washed away in the catastrophic Tate Gallery flood of 1928.

Technical notes:

The sun was initially reserved within a ring of yellow wash. The mellow overall effect is partly owing to the darkening of the centre of the sheet through prolonged display in the nineteenth century. See the main entry above for other changes.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed by ?John Ruskin in pencil ‘AB P | O’ towards bottom right; inscribed in pencil ‘53’ at centre; inscribed in pencil ‘CCLXIII.323’ bottom right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram over ‘CCLXIII – 323’ towards bottom left.