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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > North Wales 1799-1801 > Drawings Related to the Welsh Tour of > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Lake and Mountains c.1799

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Lake and Mountains’ c.1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Lake and Mountains c.1799
D01880
Turner Bequest XLIV D
Pencil and grey wash on white wove paper, 220 x 277 mm
Stamped in black ‘XLVI – D’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
In a note to his published 1909 Inventory entry,1 Finberg thought this to be a subject ‘probably seen in Wales’, and dated it to about 1796.2 The style, however, seems to indicate a slightly later date, and the sheet, for all its small size, has much in common with the grand conception of the series of North Welsh subjects that Turner produced in association with his tour to Snowdonia of 1799, and is catalogued with them in the present subsection, although it may date from a little earlier, perhaps between 1797 and 1799.
The detail of men apparently pushing out a rowing boat indicated in pencil against the flat wash evoking the surface of the water can be compared with a somewhat similar motif in Tate D04175 (Turner Bequest LXX X).
1
Finberg 1909, I, p.107.
2
A.J. Finberg (died 1939), undated MS note in interleaved copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, I, opposite p.107.
Technical notes:
The sheet is creased vertically in four places.
Verso:
Blank; stained and dirty; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Lake and Mountains c.1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-lake-and-mountains-r1180070, accessed 17 July 2024.