Canterbury | Kent | United Kingdom | England | Europe
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (The State Hermitage Museum, 2007-10-23 - 2008-01-13)Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007-07-11 - 2007-09-30)
Publications:
Graham Reynolds, Turner, Thames & Hudson, London, 2020, fig. 12, NJ18.T85 R49 2020 (YCBA)Andrew Wilton, The life and work of J.M.W. Turner, Academy Editions, London, 1979, pp. 306-307, no. 54, NJ18 T85 +W577 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Yale Center for British Art, Great British watercolors : from the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007, pp. 101-103, no. 43, ND1928 .Y35 2007 (LC)+ Oversize (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
Turner and Girtin were born in the same year and began their careers as antiquarian topographers. Turner was making sketching tours while still in his early teens. This view relates to one of two tours of Kent he made in 1792 and 1793. While visiting Canterbury he was clearly attracted to the early sixteenth-century gateway protecting the Cathedral of Christ Church beyond. Although he exhibited a view of the main façade of the gatehouse at the Royal Academy, in this version Turner painted the less grand internal side of the archway, focusing on the narrow street within the Cathedral close and presaging his interest in probing beyond the surface of things. Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)