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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > Studies for Pictures: Isleworth ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Sketch for 'Dido Building Carthage' 1805

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Sketch for 'Dido Building Carthage'’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 11 Verso:
?Sketch for ‘Dido Building Carthage’ 1805
D05506
Turner Bequest XC 11a
Pen and ink on off-white wove paper, prepared with a grey wash, 150 x 258 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
See note to folio 1 (D05491) for the various treatments in this sketchbook of an ancient seaport with figures arriving or departing. Nicholson remarks that in this ‘remarkable little drawing, cognizant of Claude [Lorrain]’s embarkation settings’, Turner ‘began to elaborate his vision’. Hill considers this version one of ‘the earliest prototypes’ for Dido Building Carthage and The Decline of Carthage exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815 and 1817 (National Gallery, London and Tate N00499);1 Butlin and Joll associate it with the former, together with a related sketch on folio 31 verso (D05536).2

David Blayney Brown
August 2007

1
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.94–6 no.131 (pl.133); pp.100–1 no.135 (pl.127).
2
Ibid., p.94.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘?Sketch for ‘Dido Building Carthage’ 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2007, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-sketch-for-dido-building-carthage-r1129817, accessed 22 November 2024.