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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Tour of Yorkshire 1816 > Yorkshire 1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Study for 'The Parting of Hero and Leander' 1816

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Study for 'The Parting of Hero and Leander'’ 1816
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 103 Verso:
Study for ‘The Parting of Hero and Leander’ 1816
D11036
Turner Bequest CXLIV 103a
Pencil on white wove paper, 97 x 154 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This drawing is cited by Butlin and Joll as a preparatory study for the painting The Parting of Hero and Leander (National Gallery, London)1 exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837. The correspondence is so close, especially on the right of the composition, as to suggest that the painting might have been begun about 1816, well before its exhibition. Indeed Butlin and Joll note a still-earlier idea for the subject in the Calais Pier sketchbook (Tate D04959; Turner Bequest LXXXI 57) and a possibly contemporary study on part of a letter addressed to Walter Fawkes (Tate D34924; Turner Bequest CCCLIV 427). Given that the present sketchbook was used to make a tour of Yorkshire from Fawkes’s home at Farnley Hall, it would appear that the idea for the composition was most fully developed at this time and in the Farnley context.

David Hill
January 2009

1
Butlin and Joll 1984, pp.221–2 no.370 (pl.374).

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Study for ‘The Parting of Hero and Leander’ 1816 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-study-for-the-parting-of-hero-and-leander-r1144225, accessed 04 January 2025.