Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
- Part of
- Bellinzona Sketchbook
- Medium
- Graphite, watercolour and pen on paper
- Dimensions
- Support: 227 × 327 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
- Reference
- D33596
Turner Bequest CCCXXXVI 17
Display caption
It was Turner's mountain subjects that Ruskin admired above all others. He grouped these works in his catalogue after those of Venice to provide a counterpoint to their delicacy and repose, noting that Turner's depictions of rocky peaks and defiles were characterised by 'force of colour, and energy both of form and effect'. Of those exhibited here, he felt that no.72 was 'the grandest sketch in the whole series', with no.74 falling close behind. He particularly relished the way Turner had suggested the physical structure of a granite cliff: 'the pencilling along the edge of the fathest precipice, where sloping lines in an almost equi-distant succession, indicate the jags of the cliff at its most exposed angle.'
Gallery label, August 2004
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