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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Liber Studiorum notes c.1807-19 > Finance Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Landscape with Canal Locks and a Windmill c.1807-14

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Landscape with Canal Locks and a Windmill’ c.1807-14
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 10 Verso:
A Landscape with Canal Locks and a Windmill c.1807–14
D08299
Turner Bequest CXXII 10a
Pencil on white wove paper, 112 x 69 mm
Part watermark ‘E & | 18’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the page turned vertically, this rather schematic sketch appears to show low-lying structures, apparently canal locks, in the foreground and a windmill marked as an ‘X’ on the skyline, with the disk of the sun or moon above. There is a similar view, this time horizontal, on folio 11 recto opposite (D08300), inscribed ‘5 Locks’. The very faint sketch on the recto of this leaf (D08298) may also be related.
There does not seem to be any direct connection with Turner’s painting Grand Junction Canal at Southall Mill, exhibited at his gallery in 1810 (currently untraced),1 or the associated Liber Studiorum design Windmill and Lock (see under Tate N02941), for which direct drawings are known. There are various identified and likely subjects along the Thames in this sketchbook, as discussed in the Introduction.

Matthew Imms
September 2013

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.72–3 no.101, pl.108 (colour);

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Landscape with Canal Locks and a Windmill c.1807–14 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-landscape-with-canal-locks-and-a-windmill-r1147775, accessed 21 November 2024.