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

Turner Bequest CCCXVII 20–25

While works on separate sheets of grey, brown and blue paper in the parallel Venice subsections of this catalogue are now generally accepted as having been made during or soon after Turner’s 1840 stay in the city (see the overall Introduction to the tour), the status and dating of these six waterfront views on sheets of grey paper of similar sizes is less secure. They were numbered consecutively within the ‘Venice: Miscellaneous. (b) Grey Paper’ section of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory, without further comment or differentiation from the others.1

Similar paper was used extensively for various subjects associated with the 1840 Venice visit (Tate D32180–D32181, D32183–D32184, D32200–D32201, D32203–D32204, D32212, D32215, D32217, D33883; Turner Bequest CCCXVII 1, 2, 4, 5, 15, 16, 18, 19, 27–30, 32, CCCXLI 183),2 and some, notably D32204 (CCCXVII 19), show scaffolding on the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) which Turner could only have seen in 1840 (see the Introduction to the tour). However, in the context of the artist’s Continental tour of 1833 including the second of his three visits to the city, Ian Warrell noted Turner’s use of grey paper by Bally, Ellen and Steart,3 ‘from at least four different batches’, and that it is ‘possible’ that these six works relate to that occasion.4

As Warrell has observed, uncertainty arises in these instances in that ‘at least three of the designs [D32207–D32209] set out the compositions of paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy before the 1840 visit, though these could be interpreted as instances of Turner revisiting a subject he had already treated’, while a tower possibly depicted in D32206 was demolished in 1837.5 Warrell implied that the six could have been painted directly from their subjects, as the ‘dove-grey paper would have been ideal for use in bright Italian light ... by absorbing some of the sun’s brilliance’,6 while by the ‘use of a limited tonal palette over pencil outlines, the impression they create is of observations recorded on the spot’.7 This is very often a moot point regarding Turner’s sketching practice, and Warrell observed that ‘stylistic similarities among the watercolours cannot be relied upon as the sole indicator of when they were painted’8 and in what context, whether as ‘personal memoranda or as preparatory studies for paintings’.9

Two sheets (D32205, D32209; CCCXVII 20, 24) are respectively inscribed in pencil ‘8 V’ and ‘6 V’; these seem to be in series with several other Venice watercolours associated with 1840, although whether they were intended as an informal series or when these numbers were applied is unclear; see the Introduction to the tour. For the purposes of the arrangement of the present catalogue, the six sheets are here dated ‘?1840’ rather than Warrell’s ‘1833 or 1840’; this is not to imply that the earlier date is necessarily less likely.

See also the entry for Tate D32183 (Turner Bequest CCCXVII 4), a grey paper study which can be related to an 1841 painting.