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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Tintern Abbey from the River Wye c.1828

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Tintern Abbey from the River Wye c.1828
D25142
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 20
Watercolour on white wove paper, 306 x 487 mm
Watermark ‘C Ansell | 1828’
Inscribed in red ink ‘20’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 20’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Eric Shanes identifies this as a view of Tintern Abbey (the dark shape at the centre), from upstream on the River Wye. It is derived from a drawing in the 1798 Hereford Court sketchbook (Tate D01263; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 13), which had been used shortly afterwards as the basis of ‘a large watercolour of the same panorama’ (currently untraced).1 The present colour study appears not to have been developed elsewhere, although it seems a likely candidate for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales series.2 For some of Turner’s early 1790s vies of Tintern, see under Tate D00374 (Turner Bequest XXIII A).
See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified but unrealised subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.
1
Shanes 1997, p.74; see also p.92 note 62.1; not listed in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979.
2
See Shanes 1997, pp.27, 74.
Verso:
Blank

Matthew Imms
March 2013

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Tintern Abbey from the River Wye c.1828 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, 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-tintern-abbey-from-the-river-wye-r1144329, accessed 21 November 2024.