Joseph Mallord William Turner Water Mill c.1808
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Water Mill circa 1808
D08140
Turner Bequest CXVII M
Turner Bequest CXVII M
Pencil and watercolour on off-white wove writing paper, 181 x 254 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1904
National Gallery, London, various dates to at least 1904 (505, as ‘Watermill’).
1921
The Liber Studiorum by Turner: Drawings, Etchings, and First State Mezzotint Engravings with Some Additional Engravers’ Proofs and 51 of the Original Copperplates, National Gallery, Millbank [Tate Gallery], London, November 1921–November 1922 (not in catalogue).
1922
Original Drawings, Etchings, Mezzotints, and Copperplates for the “Liber Studiorum” by J.M.W. Turner, R.A., Whitworth Institute Art Galleries, Manchester, December 1922–March 1923 (not in catalogue).
1993
J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Impressions de Gran Bretanya i el Continent Europeu / Impresiones de Gran Bretaña y el Continente Europeo, Centre Cultural de la Fundació ”la Caixa”, Barcelona, September–November 1993, Sala de Exposiciones de la Fundación ”la Caixa”, Madrid, November 1993–January 1994 (26, reproduced in colour).
1994
J.M.W. Turner 1775–1851: Aquarelles et Dessins du Legs Turner: Collection de la Tate Gallery, Londres / Watercolours and Drawings from the Turner Bequest: Collection from the Tate Gallery, London, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Charleroi, September–December 1994 (26, reproduced in colour).
Engraved:
Etching and mezzotint by Turner and Robert Dunkarton, ‘Water Mill.’, published Turner, 1 February 1812
Etching and mezzotint by Turner and Robert Dunkarton, ‘Water Mill.’, published Turner, 1 February 1812
References
1859
John Burnet and Peter Cunningham, Turner and his Works: Illustrated with Examples from his Pictures, and Critical Remarks on his Principles of Painting, 2nd ed., revised by Henry Murray, London 1859, p.121 no.26.
1862
Walter Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by his Friends and Fellow-Academicians, London 1862 [1861], vol.II, p.388 no.45.
1862
Turner’s Liber Studiorum. Second Series. Photographs from Twenty-One Original Drawings by J.M.W. Turner, R.A. in the South Kensington Museum. Published under the Authority of the Department of Science and Art, London and Manchester 1862, reproduced pl.[13].
1872
[J.E. Taylor and Henry Vaughan], Exhibition Illustrative of Turner’s Liber Studiorum, Containing Choice Impressions of the First States, Etchings, Touched Proofs, together with the Unpublished Plates, and a Few Original Drawings for the Work, exhibition catalogue, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London 1872, p.32 under no.37.
1878
W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, A Description and a Catalogue, London 1878, p.77 under no.37.
1885
Rev. Stopford [Augustus] Brooke, Notes on the Liber Studiorum of J.M.W. Turner, R.A., revised ed., London 1885, pp.[120]–3.
1897
Walter Thornbury, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Founded on Letters and Papers Furnished by his Friends and Fellow-Academicians: A New Edition, London 1897, p.584 no.45.
1903
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn eds., Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume III: Modern Painters: Volume I, London 1903, p.236.
1903
Ibid., Volume VII: Modern Painters: Volume V, London 1903, pp.432, 433.
1904
Ibid., Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, p.632 no.505, as ‘Watermill’.
1906
Ibid., Volume XXI: The Ruskin Art Collection at Oxford: Catalogues, Notes, and Instructions, London 1906, pp.217–18.
1906
Ibid., Volume XXII: Lectures on Landscape; Michel Angelo & Tintoret; The Eagle’s Nest; Ariadne Florentina; with Notes for Other Oxford Lectures, London 1906, pp.67–8.
1906
W[illiam] G[eorge] Rawlinson, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, A Description and a Catalogue. Second Edition, Revised Throughout, London 1906, p.90 under no.37.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.319, CXVII M.
1921
Untitled typescript list of works relating to 1921 and 1922 Liber Studiorum exhibitions, [circa 1921], Tate exhibition files, Tate Archive TG 92/9/2, p.2.
1924
Alexander J. Finberg, The History of Turner’s Liber Studiorum with a New Catalogue Raisonné, London 1924, reproduced p.[146], p.147 under no.37.
1938
Martin Hardie, The Liber Studiorum Mezzotints of Sir Frank Short, R.A., P.R.E. after J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Catalogue & Introduction, London 1938, p.45.
1996
Gillian Forrester, Turner’s ‘Drawing Book’: The Liber Studiorum, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1996, pp.15, 24 note 77, 97 no.37i, reproduced, pp.160, 161.
2008
Gillian Forrester, David Hill, Matthew Imms and others, Reisen mit William Turner: J.M.W. Turner: Das Liber Studiorum, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Stihl, Waiblingen 2008, p.112.
Along with Hind Head Hill, St Catherine’s Hill near Guildford and Hedging and Ditching (see Tate D08130, D08137, D08151; Turner Bequest CXVII C, J, W) this Liber Studiorum composition is derived from slight sketches made in the Spithead sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest C), generally thought to have been made on Turner’s round trip from London to Portsmouth in October and November 1807.1 Falling between those of Hindhead and Guildford – suggesting that the actual mill lay somewhere between those two locations – the drawing developed for the present design (D06582; C 52a) is so slight, with little to indicate the building’s function, that many elements of the mill and its surroundings must have been either recalled from memory or simply invented; as Gillian Forrester points out, Turner also felt free to change the season to summer, 2 in order to allude to the harvest with the woman carrying a sheaf.
The design is one of a number in the Liber depicting more or less prominent watermills (see in particular Bridge and Cows, Pembury Mill, Kent, and Mill near the Grand Chartreuse – drawings respectively Tate D08102, D08116, D08156; Turner Bequest CXVI A, O, Vaughan Bequest CXVIII B). Forrester has discussed the possible influence of The Water Mill, the first prominent painting by Turner’s emulator Augustus Wall Callcott, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1805 (private collection), 3 although David Blayney Brown has compared Callcott’s ‘monumental and elegiac’ treatment to Turner’s ‘EP’ Liber category (probably indicating ‘Elevated Pastoral’ – see general Liber introduction) rather than the everyday world of the ‘Pastoral’ subjects with which the present design was included.4
In Modern Painters, Ruskin regarded the scene as consistent with Turner’s dwelling on ‘decay and humiliation’ and ‘patient striving with hard conditions of life’ in the Liber, with ‘the water-mill, beyond the fallen steps, overgrown with the thistle: itself a ruin, mud-built at first, now propped on both sides; – the planks torn from its cattle-shed; ... the old mill-stone – useless for many a day – half-buried in slime, at the bottom of the wall; the listless children, listless dog, and the poor gleaner bringing her single sheaf to be ground.’5 Yet earlier in the same work, he had considered the latter (in engraved form) ‘exquisite’,6 and elsewhere declared that ‘it is pleasant to pass ... to this piece of rustic life, in which the repose of its natural tenor is sinking into the natural repose of decay.’7 He eventually returned to the pessimistic view he had expressed in Modern Painters, concluding that ‘the master insists upon the ancient curse of the earth [God’s curse on Adam] – “Thorns also and Thistles shall it bring forth to thee.”’8
The composition is recorded, as ‘7[:] 1 Dunkartons Mill’, in the Liber Notes (2) sketchbook (Tate D12157; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 24), in a draft schedule of the first ten parts of the Liber (D12156–D12158; CLIV (a) 23a–24a)9 dated by Finberg and Gillian Forrester to before the middle of 1808.10 It also appears later in the sketchbook, as ‘15 Dunkarton Mill’, in a list of published and unpublished ‘Pastoral’ subjects (Tate D12160; Turner Bequest CLIV (a) 25a).11
The Liber Studiorum etching and mezzotint engraving, etched by Turner and engraved by Robert Dunkarton, bears the publication date 1 February 1812 and was issued to subscribers as ‘Water Mill.’ in part 8 (Rawlinson/Finberg nos.37–41;12 see also Tate D08141, D08142, D08144; Turner Bequest CXVII N, O, P). Tate holds impressions of the preliminary outline etching (Tate A00984) and the published engraving (A00985). It is one of fourteen published Liber Studiorum subjects in Turner’s ‘Pastoral’ category (see also Tate D08102, D08111, D08116, D08121, D08127, D08136, D08145, D08151, D08158, D08167; Turner Bequest CXVI A, J, O, T, Z, CXVII I, Q, W, CXVIII D, M; and Tate N02941).
Frank Short included this composition13 among his Twelve Subjects from the Liber Studiorum of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Etched and Mezzotinted by Frank Short (published by Robert Dunthorne of the Rembrandt Gallery, London, between 1885 and 1888), the first series of his Liber interpretations (Tate T05044 and T05045;14 see general Liber introduction).
See Alexander J. Finberg, The Life of J.M.W. Turner, R.A. Second Edition, Revised, with a Supplement, by Hilda F. Finberg, revised ed., Oxford 1961, p.138.
David Blayney Brown, Augustus Wall Callcott, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1981, p.54; mezzotint after Callcott’s painting reproduced p.53.
‘Catalogue of the Rudimentary Series’ in Instructions in Practice of Elementary Drawing, in ibid., XXI 1906, p.217.
Technical notes:
There was no initial overall wash, and pencil work is limited to the woman at the left. Some washes were applied to wet paper, the lights were reserved and brushwork followed, but not scratching-out; instead there is rubbing out, perhaps using bread, at the bottom of the steps, and the prop to the right of the mill was washed out, as were the clouds from the uniformly washed sky. Fingerprints are also evident in the washes, most clearly on the wall to the left of the waterwheel. The overall colour is a warm brown, with touches in cooler shades, the pigments being Indian red, burnt sienna, and umber; there are small brushstrokes in the full range of browns in the foreground, and parts of the mill itself are picked out in warm shades.1
Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions.
Inscribed in pencil ‘M’ centre right
Stamped in black ‘[crown] | N•G | CXVII – M’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘[crown] | N•G | CXVII – M’ bottom left
There are abrasions where the sheet was formerly stuck down.
Matthew Imms
August 2008
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Water Mill c.1808 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2008, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www