Lot Essay
This fine 'colour beginning' was tentatively identified by Wilton, loc.cit., as a view in Switzerland, executed in the 1840s. However, the less transparent, less broken use of watercolour, and the 1828 watermark (recorded in the Agnew's exhibition catalogue of 1988 but no longer visible as the watercolour has been laid down), suggests an earlier date. It is particularly close to colour beginnings that have been related to the Picturesque Views in England and Wales, issued as engravings between 1827 and 1838 (examples are illustrated in colour in A. Lyles, Turner: The Fifth Decade, Watercolours 1830-1840, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London, February - May 1992, pls. 17, 24-6). The composition of the present watercolour, with mountains seen in the distance beyond a lake with flanking hills, resembles two finished watercolours Ullswater, Cumberland executed in the mid-1830's for the England and Wales series (Wilton, op.cit., p. 400, no. 860, illustrated, as circa 1833, also p. 181, illustrated pl. 197, and E. Shanes, Turner's Picturesque Views in England and Wales, London, 1979, pl. 68 illustrated) and Winander-Mere, Westmoreland (Wilton, op.cit., p. 402, no. 874, illustrated, as circa 1835, illustrated in colour E. Shanes, op.cit., pl. 82). It is probably therefore a scene in the Lake District, based, like the examples mentioned, on drawings executed many years earlier in 1797 in the Tweed and Lakes sketchbook.