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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1813 > Chemistry and Apuleia Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bristol: Clifton from across the Avon Gorge c.1813

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bristol: Clifton from across the Avon Gorge’ c.1813
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Verso:
Bristol: Clifton from across the Avon Gorge c.1813
D09899
Turner Bequest CXXXV 6a
Pencil on white wove paper, 88 x 113 mm
Part watermark ‘mott | 11’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
At the centre of this page are the giant pilasters articulating the west end of Windsor Terrace on its bastion above the Avon flowing north from Bristol, which is largely obscured by the central buildings. The viewpoint is Burgh Walls, south of the later Clifton Suspension Bridge; the drawing continues on folio 7 recto opposite, with trees, what appears to be a gateway, and distant hills to the south-east (D09900). An oil of about 1822–3 by Francis Danby, showing a Landscape near Clifton (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven),1 is comparable in its focus on Windsor Terrace.
This is one of five Bristol sketches between folio 3 verso (D09894, under which earlier views are discussed) and folio 8 recto (D09902).
1
Francis Greenacre, Francis Danby 1793–1861, exhibition catalogue, City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery 1988, p.83 no.9, reproduced; Eric Adams, Francis Danby: Varieties of Poetic Landscape, New Haven and London 1973, p.172 no.16, fig.25.
Technical notes:
There is a small, ringed spot of foxing at the top left, showing through to the recto (D09898).

Matthew Imms
April 2014

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Bristol: Clifton from across the Avon Gorge c.1813 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-bristol-clifton-from-across-the-avon-gorge-r1147854, accessed 25 November 2024.