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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > Old London Bridge Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Old London Bridge with Piledrivers and the Thames Waterfront below Southwark Cathedral ?1824

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Old London Bridge with Piledrivers and the Thames Waterfront below Southwark Cathedral’ ?1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 7 Recto:
Old London Bridge with Piledrivers and the Thames Waterfront below Southwark Cathedral ?1824
D17846
Turner Bequest CCV 7
Pencil on white wove paper, 98 x 162 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘X [?G... T... | F...]’ top centre
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘7’ top left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCV – 7’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, Old London Bridge is shown from the north-east across the River Thames, with the tower of St Olave’s Church and the nearby shot tower (both now gone) on the left. Below is a detail of the waterfront continuing to the right, with Southwark Cathedral beyond the rooftops; Turner subsequently extended the main drawing half-way across folio 6 verso opposite, leaving the corresponding section there in sketchy outline.
As David Hill has noted, ‘piling operations’ for the bridge’s replacement a little upstream are represented here by the sequences of narrow triangles indicating piledrivers for the coffer-dams from which the new structure’s piers would rise; work began in March 1824, suggesting Turner drew these preliminary stages that spring or summer.1
More than half the drawings in this sketchbook show the River Thames around Old London Bridge, and are likely to date from the same time; see the Introduction.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
Hill 1993, p.176 note 79.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Old London Bridge with Piledrivers and the Thames Waterfront below Southwark Cathedral ?1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-old-london-bridge-with-piledrivers-and-the-thames-waterfront-r1172557, accessed 21 November 2024.