Oil paint on canvas
Surrey
Tate Collection
Works with images
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Turner Bequest
Oil paintings
Collection
Turner owned by Tate
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558" aria-label="More by Joseph Mallord William Turner" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Joseph Mallord William Turner</a>
Harvest Dinner Kingston Bank
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
actions: postures and motions
adults
agriculture and fishing
bank
cart
eating and drinking
England
England, South East
England, Southern
field
figure
group
groups
harvesting
Kingston
landscape
leisure and pastimes
people
picnic
places
sitting
society
standing
Surrey
transport: land
UK counties
UK countries and regions
UK London
water: inland
work and occupations
<p>Turner worked on a number of views of the river Thames during a campaign of open-air painting and sketching along the river in 1805. Some of them may have been intended as the beginnings of pictures, but Turner used this as an exploratory oil sketch. He repainted its design of figures on the bank in his finished picture which is shown next to this. Its emphasis on the figures rather than the setting perhaps anyway suggests that it might in fact have been a studio design rather than a work painted in the open air.</p><p><em>Gallery label, August 2004</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
30 July 2001 – 23 June 2002
2002-06-23
30 July 2001 – 23 June 2002
2002-06-23
2001-07-30
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-07-30
Painting the English Landscape
Collection based display
Sketch for ‘Harvest Dinner, Kingston Bank’
support: 610 × 914 mm
frame: 880 × 1185 × 110 mm
Accepted by the nation as part of the <a href="/search?gid=999999781" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Turner Bequest</a> 1856
<p>Turner worked on a number of views of the river Thames during a campaign of open-air <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> and sketching along the river in 1805. Some of them may have been intended as the beginnings of pictures, but Turner used this as an exploratory oil sketch. He repainted its design of figures on  the bank in his finished picture which is shown next to this. Its emphasis on the figures rather  than the setting perhaps anyway suggests that  it might in fact have been a studio design rather than a work painted in the open air. 
</p><p>
</p>
Display caption
2004-08-31T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>160. </b>[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-sketch-for-harvest-dinner-kingston-bank-n02696" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02696</span></a>] <b>Sketch for ‘Harvest Dinner, Kingston Bank’</b> <i>c.</i> 1806–7
<br/>
<br/>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (2696)
<br/>Canvas, 24 × 36 (61 × 91·5)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Turner Bequest 1856 (? one of 219–35); transferred to the Tate Gallery 1910.</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, p. 24.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Used with variations for the finished picture exhibited at Turner's gallery in 1809 (No. 90 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-harvest-dinner-kingston-bank-n00491" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00491</span></a>]). In the latter the placing of the figures is altered, the hay-cart is moved to behind the standing figure silhouetted against the sky, and a group of boats and further distant hills are introduced on the right.
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<br/>This is the only picture in this group to have been used so directly as a sketch for another work, and it also differs from the others in being only half the size. In technique, however, it is identical.
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<br/>[from] <b>Nos. 160–76: Large Thames Sketches <i>c.</i> 1806–7</b>
<br/>
<br/>THIS group of seventeen sketches on <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a> from the Turner bequest, though carried to different degree of finish, are all similar in technique, being lightly painted over a dry chalky ground, and are all roughly similar in size save for <i>Sketch for ‘Harvest Dinner, Kingston Bank’</i>, which measures only 24 × 36 in. (No. 160 [<span>N02696</span>]). This last was used for the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> exhibited at Turner's gallery in 1809 and again in 1810 (No. 90 [<span>N00491</span>]). Others are more loosely related to finished oil paintings exhibited in 1808, 1809 and 1810. A number of them are also related to <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawings</span></a> in the ‘Thames from Reading to Walton’ sketchbook, datable <i>c.</i> 1806 (XCV; pp. 22–3 are sketches for the pictures of Walton Bridges, paid for early in 1807, see Nos. 60 and 63); <i>c.f.</i> for example pp. 31 and 37 with No. 173 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-washing-sheep-n02699" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02699</span></a>], and p. 35 with No. 172 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-willows-beside-a-stream-n02706" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02706</span></a>]; there is a different view of Goring Church, the subject of No. 161 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-goring-mill-and-church-n02704" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02704</span></a>], on p. 19. The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> of one example, <i>Trees beside a River, with a Bridge in the Middle Distance</i> (No. 169 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-trees-beside-the-river-with-bridge-in-the-middle-distance-n02692" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02692</span></a>]), is very close to a drawing in the rather earlier ‘Studies for Pictures; Isleworth’ sketchbook, sandwiched between lists of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/classicism" title="Glossary definition for 'Classicism'"><span>classical</span></a> and Biblical subjects (XC-55 <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso" title="Glossary definition for 'Recto / Verso'"><span>verso</span></a> and 56): for the evidence for dating this sketchbook <i>c.</i> 1804–5 see Nos. 149 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-windsor-castle-from-the-thames-t03870" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T03870</span></a>] and 169 [<span>N02692</span>].
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<br/>There is reason to suppose that, contrary to Turner's usual practice, some if not all of these sketches were at least begun out-of-doors. Thornbury prints some reminiscences of the son of Turner's ‘oldest friend the Rev. Mr. Trimmer’, who had been out fishing with Turner when a child. ‘He had a boat at Richmond ... From his boat he painted on a large canvas direct from Nature. Till you have seen these sketches, you know nothing of Turner's powers. There are about two score of these large subjects, rolled up, and now national property ... There is a red sunset (simply the sky) among the rolls’. The last, probably the sadly darkened <i>Sunset</i> (No. 525 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-sunset-n01876" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01876</span></a>]), is different in character from the works under discussion and is probably later, but the folded and battered condition of many of the Thames sketches such as Nos. 171[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-river-scene-with-weir-in-middle-distance-n02703" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02703</span></a>] and 173 [<span>N02699</span>] supports the identification with the works mentioned by Trimmer, as does the fact that the sketches seem to have been unstretched when they came to be relined early this century; indeed, some if not all may never have been stretched, No. 167 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-weir-and-cattle-n02705" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02705</span></a>] for instance showing none of the usual pulling at the edges from the nails attaching a canvas to a stretcher. As in the case of two later groups of sketches on canvas, those painted in the Isle of Wight in 1827 (Nos. 260–268 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-sketch-for-east-cowes-castle-the-regatta-beating-to-windward-no-1-n01995" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01995</span></a>-<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-study-of-sea-and-sky-isle-of-wight-n02001" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02001</span></a>]) and those done in Rome 1828–9 (Nos. 302–317), Turner may have painted on rolls of canvas, working them over a frame to use different areas as required. If these sketches were always on loose canvases they may have been the ‘Roll of 17 separate Canvasses’, nos. 219 to 235 in the inventory of the Turner Bequest. All but one were first numbered, restored and put on public exhibition in 1910; No. 165 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-thames-glimpsed-between-trees-possibly-at-kew-bridge-n05519" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05519</span></a>], which is in considerably worse condition, was not even numbered until 1944.
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<br/>Though Turner did not complete his own cottage at Twickenham, across the river from Richmond, until 1813, he already had a second home at Isleworth, not that much further from Richmond, by 23 May 1805 (see Youngblood <i>op. cit.</i>, p. 34 n. 9), and at Upper Mall, Hammersmith probably from late 1806 until 1811, and he could well have had a boat at Richmond during all this period. John Gage suggested in 1969 that this group of sketches was executed over a number of years from about 1807 to as late as <i>Crossing the Brook</i>, exhibited in 1815 (No. 130 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-crossing-the-brook-n00497" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00497</span></a>]); however in 1983 he accepted our dating for two of the sketches made on the Thames above London although dating one of the Thames estuary sketches (No. 176, <i>q.v </i>[<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-coast-scene-with-fishermen-and-boats-n02698" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N02698</span></a>].) to <i>c.</i> 1809. It is difficult to be sure of Turner's methods but the evidence of the sketchbooks and also of the groups of oil sketches that he is known to have painted on rolls of canvas, at Cowes in 1827 (Nos. 260–8 [<span>N01995</span>-<span>N02001</span>]) and in and around Rome in 1828 (Nos. 302–17) suggest that he was more likely to execute a whole run of sketches, varying in execution and degree of finish to a considerable extent, in a short time than to spread such series over periods of years. It seems likely therefore that Turner only used this rather unusual size and technique for this sort of sketch as a limited experiment.
<br/></p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Thornbury 1862, i, p. 169; 1877, pp. 120–21; MacColl 1920, pp. 38–40; Herrmann 1963, p. 12; Kitson 1964, pp. 77–8; Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, pp. 24–6; Gage 1969, pp. 37–8; Reynolds 1969, p. 71; Ziff 1971, p. 125; Herrmann 1975, pp. 229; Ziff 1980, p. 169; Youngblood, 1982, pp. 21, 34 nn. 9 and 23; Gage in exh. cat., Paris 1983–4, pp. 77–9.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, <i>The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner</i>, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-09-23T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions adults agriculture and fishing bank cart eating and drinking England England, South East England, Southern field figure group groups harvesting Kingston landscape leisure and pastimes people picnic places sitting society standing Surrey transport: land UK counties UK countries and regions UK London water: inland work and occupations