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

This large, airy ‘colour beginning’ of a golden sky over water was dubbed ‘Lake, with distant headland and palaces’ by Finberg,1 presumably thinking of an idealised Italianate setting like those of Tate D25311 and D25446 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 189, 323).2 For a while it was associated with the large watercolour Landscape: Composition of Tivoli, dated 1817, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1818 (private collection),3 and engraved in 1827 (Tate impression: T04502);4 the sheet’s 1824 watermark precludes this, but compare Tate D17191 (Turner Bequest CXCVII A), a colour study which is closely related to the exhibited work.

Suggesting that Turner did originally have Tivoli in mind here too, Andrew Wilton tentatively noted the striking resemblance5 to the watercolour Rise of the River Stour at Stourhead, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1825 (private collection),6 which has sometimes been regarded as a pendant to the 1817 work.7 Ian Warrell has since made the connection explicit, describing how the ‘Italianate’ light in the Stourhead view ‘had begun as a more diluted, almost sunrise effect’ in this ‘experimental’ study.8 With its prominent sun low over the water towards evening, flanked by classical architecture, the finished design of an English scene evokes Claude Lorrain (1604/5–1682), whom Turner greatly admired and often emulated,9 just as much as the 1817 Composition; however, Eric Shanes has set out various stylistic pointers that indicate that it was likely made shortly before its initial 1825 showing. Assuming a direct preparatory relationship, the present work’s 1824 watermark would confirm this.

The most obvious difference in the finished Stourhead view is the introduction of prominent silhouetted trees across the right-hand third of the composition, as well as a hillside beyond those on the left, and classical garden buildings and a bridge in the foreground and middle distance there. Nevertheless, despite these major differences, the connection seems highly probable. Turner had been visiting the Wiltshire estate of his patron Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838) since the late 1790s, when he made unresolved colour studies of aspects of the renowned gardens with their picturesquely scattered Gothic follies and classical temples (Tate D01907–D01909; Turner Bequest XLIV e, f, g), as discussed by Wilton in the ‘Architectural Drawings for Commissions c.1797–1800’ subsection under ‘Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797–1807’ elsewhere in this catalogue. Now in the care of the National Trust, Stourhead remains a key example of English landscape garden design informed by antiquarian sensibility and the Grand Tour.

Verso:

Blank; stained, becoming darker towards the right.