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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Colour Studies of the Sun, Skies and ... > Colour Studies of Clouds, Storms and ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Three Studies of Clouds over the Sea, One by Moonlight c.1820-40

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Three Studies of Clouds over the Sea, One by Moonlight’ c.1820-40
Three Studies of Clouds over the Sea, One by Moonlight c.1820–40
D25244
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 122
Watercolour on white wove paper, 542 x 336 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards top left, below right of centre and towards bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘122’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 122’ top right, ascending vertically
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the sheet turned vertically, Turner has evoked three widely varying skies, with moonlit clouds over a dark horizon at the centre, a bright sky over what appears to be a choppy sea inverted at the top, and a more ambiguous scene at the bottom, with dark storm clouds over a rough sea or uneven land or possibly, if again inverted, over a bright horizon.
A colour plate of this work in the Tate Gallery’s 1973 Landscape in Britain exhibition is wrongly captioned as showing, another exhibit comprising various cloud studies (Tate D25241; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 119).1 Ian Warrell has noted the latter, the present work and the seascape studies on Tate D25237 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 115) as examples of Turner’s using a single sheet for variant studies;2 see also Tate D25253 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 131) in the present subsection.
1
Colour plate in Leslie Parris, Landscape in Britain c.1750–1850, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1973, p.84; see also p.92, where the present work is no. 216, with D25241 as no.217.
2
See Warrell 1991, p.41.
Verso:
Blank; not available for inspection at time of writing.

Matthew Imms
March 2016

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Three Studies of Clouds over the Sea, One by Moonlight c.1820–40’, catalogue entry, March 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/three-studies-of-clouds-over-the-sea-one-by-moonlight-r1183150, accessed 26 December 2024.