Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Decade 1800-1810
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
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>
London Greenwich Park
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
animals: mammals
architecture
City of London
City of London, St Paul’s Cathedral
commerce
deer
dome
England
features
garden structures
Greenwich, Royal Naval Hospital
hospital
landscape
natural phenomena
park
places
public and municipal
river
River Thames
shadow
smoke
social comment
society
sunbeam
townscape, distant
townscapes / man-made features
UK countries and regions
UK London
UK natural features
water: inland
weather
wooded
<p>London was the largest, busiest city in the world at the time Turner painted this picture. He exhibited it with lines from a poem he had written himself, describing a hectic, oppressive city – a ‘world of care’ beneath a ‘murky veil’ of cloud, relieved only by the ‘gleams of hope’ offered by its architecture. Greenwich Hospital – a home for retired sailors of the Royal Navy – is at the centre of the painting. The sunlit River Thames leads our eye to the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, towering above the distant city.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
15 May 2004 – 16 May 2005
2005-05-16
15 May 2004 – 5 September 2004
2004-09-05
2004-05-15
Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada)
http://www.ago.net
16 October 2004 – 16 January 2005
2005-01-16
2004-10-16
Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (Paris, France)
10 February 2005 – 16 May 2005
2005-05-16
2005-02-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2004-05-15
Turner Whistler Monet
Exhibition
1 October 2007 – 21 September 2008
2008-09-21
1 October 2007 – 6 January 2008
2008-01-06
2007-10-01
National Gallery of Art (Washington DC, USA)
10 February 2008 – 18 May 2008
2008-05-18
2008-02-10
Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, USA)
http://www.DallasMuseumofArt.org
23 June 2008 – 21 September 2008
2008-09-21
2008-06-23
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA)
http://www.metmuseum.org
2007-10-01
JMW Turner
Tate partnerships & programmes
12 August 2009 – 26 July 2010
2010-07-26
12 August 2009 – 26 July 2010
2010-07-26
2009-08-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-08-12
Turner on the Thames
Collection based display
1 October 2016 – 9 October 2017
2017-10-09
1 October 2016 – 9 October 2017
2017-10-09
2016-10-01
The Queen’s House (London, UK)
2016-10-01
The Queen's House 400th Anniversary
Loan-out
1 October 2017
1 October 2017
2017-10-01
The Queen’s House (London, UK)
2017-10-01
Long loan to Royal Museums Greenwich
Loan-out
6 April 2020 – 27 November 2022
2022-11-27
6 April 2020
2020-04-06
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2020-04-06
Clore 104
Collection based display
28 October 2020 – 10 July 2022
2022-07-10
28 October 2020 – 12 September 2021
2021-09-12
2020-10-28
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
17 October 2021 – 6 February 2022
2022-02-06
2021-10-17
Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, USA)
http://www.kimbellart.org
27 March 2022 – 10 July 2022
2022-07-10
2022-03-27
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA)
http://www.mfa.org
2020-10-28
Turner's Modern World
Exhibition
17 October 2021 – 10 July 2022
2022-07-10
17 October 2021 – 6 February 2022
2022-02-06
2021-10-17
Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth, USA)
http://www.kimbellart.org
27 March 2022 – 10 July 2022
2022-07-10
2022-03-27
Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA)
http://www.mfa.org
2021-10-17
Turner's Modern World
Loan-out
13 March 2023
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-03-13
Gallery 101
Collection based display
London from Greenwich Park
support: 902 × 1200 mm
frame: 1285 × 1584 × 155 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
<div class="text">
<p>London was the largest, busiest city in the world at the time Turner painted this picture. He exhibited it with lines from a poem he had written himself, describing a hectic, oppressive city – a ‘world of care’ beneath a ‘murky veil’ of cloud, relieved only by the ‘gleams of hope’ offered by its architecture. Greenwich Hospital – a home for retired sailors of the Royal Navy – is at the centre of the painting. The sunlit River Thames leads our eye to the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, towering above the distant city.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2023-10-25T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><b>97. </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-london-from-greenwich-park-n00483" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00483</span></a>]<b> London</b> Exh. 1809
<br/>
<br/>THE TATE GALLERY, LONDON (483)
<br/>Canvas, 35 1/2 × 47 1/2 (90 × 120)
<br/>Inscribed ‘1809’ and ‘JMW Turner RA PP [?]’ lower left centre. (Plate 565)</p>
<p><b>Coll.</b> Walter Fawkes by 1811; returned to the artist by exchange (Thornbury) at an unknown date; Turner Bequest 1856 (13, ‘Greenwich Hospital’ 4'0" × 3'0"), transferred to the Tate Gallery 1910.</p>
<p><b>Exh.</b> Turner's gallery 1809 (16); Tate Gallery 1931 (45); Liverpool 1933 (24); R.A. 1974–5 (152, repr.); Leningrad and Moscow 1975–6 (13, repr.); Hague 1978–9 (ix, repr. in colour); Paris 1983–4 (25, repr.); Birmingham 1984.</p>
<p><b>Engr.</b> By Charles Turner for the <i>Liber Studiorum</i>, R. 26, and published 1 January 1811 as ‘In the possession of Walter Fawkes, Esq, of Farnley’. The preliminary pen and sepia drawing, CXVII-D, repr. Finberg 1924, p. 102; the etching and engraving repr. pp. 102–3.</p>
<p><b>Lit.</b> Ruskin 1857 (1903–12, xiii, pp. 119–20); Thornbury 1862, i, p. 293; 1877, p. 429; Armstrong 1902, p. 222; Finberg 1910, pp. 63, 80; 1924, p. 103; Davies 1946, p. 185; Finberg 1961, pp. 471 no. 143; Rothenstein and Butlin 1964, pp. 26–7, pl. 40; Lindsay 1966, p. 240; Hawes 1982, p. 102.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Exhibited in Turner's gallery in 1809 with the following verses:
<br/></p>
<p>Where burthen'd Thames reflects the crowded sail,
<br/>Commercial care and busy toil prevail,
<br/>Whose murky veil, aspiring to the skies,
<br/>Obscures thy beauty, and thy form denies,
<br/>Save where thy spires pierce the doubtful air,
<br/>As gleams of hope amidst a world of care.</p>
<p></p>
<p>The signature is inscribed in brown; the date, to the left and slightly higher, more carefully in black, perhaps on the picture's return to Turner; it is painted on a distinctly thinner area of paint. The letters ‘PP’, of which traces seem to remain at the end of the signature, would stand for Professor 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/p/perspective" title="Glossary definition for 'Perspective'"><span>Perspective</span></a> at the Royal <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/academy" title="Glossary definition for 'Academy'"><span>Academy</span></a>, a post to which Turner was elected in December 1807. Unevenly discoloured retouchings in the sky were removed in 1973; in particular the heavy plume of smoke rising just to the right of the right-hand dome of Greenwich Hospital was found not to be original.
<br/>
<br/>There is a preliminary <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>drawing</span></a> for the whole <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>, CXX-N (repr. Finberg 1910, pl. 30), and also some related studies of deer on XCV-43/44. There is a variant of the composition, in pen and sepia wash, in the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, that seems to have been prepared for the <i>Liber Studiorum</i> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraving</span></a> but not used (see Hartley 1984, pp. 38–43, no. 30, repr.).</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
2004-09-22T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
animals: mammals architecture City of London City of London, St Paul’s Cathedral commerce deer dome England features garden structures Greenwich, Royal Naval Hospital hospital landscape natural phenomena park places public and municipal river River Thames shadow smoke social comment society sunbeam townscape, distant townscapes / man-made features UK countries and regions UK London UK natural features water: inland weather wooded