Sale Highlights

In the Spring of 1775, 250 &nbsp;years ago this year, Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in Covent Garden, London. This son of a barber would rise to become one of the greatest and most famous artists of all time, a man born in the centre of a city who would spend a lifetime ‘out in the open’ striving to capture the very soul of a landscape. To mark this very special anniversary we are delighted to present for sale three important works by Turner this July. First is his The Rising Squall, Hot Wells, from St Vincent’s Rock, Bristol, a long-lost oil painting of 1793 which holds the distinction of being the very first oil that he exhibited at the Royal Academy. Second is a beautiful study in watercolour of a beech tree, from circa 1795, where Turner has so seamlessly transmitted to the page not only the tree’s elegant form but its texture and the unique colour of its bark and leaves, the latter are just beginning to turn in the early autumn light. Finally, we are delighted with the presence of Lake of Geneva from Above Vevey, a grand and luminous watercolour that was commissioned by Turner’s great friend and patron Walter Fawkes in 1809 and last appeared at auction in 1890. Here, we see Turner working at full tilt. Using a complex colour-range he layers on both raw and heavily diluted watercolour pigment to evoke not only the dry and dusty qualities of the foreground, but the cool waters of the lake and then the great chain of mountains beyond, which seem to hover, ever shifting in the changing light, between water and sky. Turner’s composition is carefully considered but he has also worked quickly. Look, for example, at the semi-abstract shapes that come together to form cattle on the near horizon, or how he gives the impression of sunlight sparkling on the water by cutting into the surface with his thumbnail or a knife, or finally how he evokes smoke drifting in the breeze by removing his freshly applied pigment with a damp cloth to create the perfect soft highlight.

Happy Birthday Mr Turner!

Figures and Faces

Vying Vistas

London

Head of Department

Gregory Rubinstein

Senior Advisor, Old Master Drawings

Cristiana Romalli

Head of Old Master Drawings

Alexander Faber

Specialist

Mark Griffith-Jones

Department Assistant

Adina Mukhamejan

Meet our Specialists

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The latest iteration of the Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries sale once again presents a selection of exceptional drawings, watercolors, gouaches and pastels that together chart in fascinating ways the development of the art of drawing in Europe over the centuries, and the great variety of functions that this many-faceted art form served.

Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries