Lambeth Palace

In 1925, George Booth purchased this small watercolor, attributed to the English landscape artist Joseph Mallord William Turner, from the New York art gallery Kennedy & Co. Without clear provenance before that date, it is difficult to confidently affirm the attribution. The watercolor was probably always intended as a gift for the Cranbrook Art Museum, formally established in 1930. In an early catalogue of the art museum's collection, it is identified as an alternate version of a work now in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, “View of the Archbishop's Palace, Lambeth,” the first work by Turner to be exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art, in 1790. Turner was then only fifteen years old. Over the course of his career, Turner would transform the art of landscape painting in England through his radical use of light and color.

This very early watercolor, however, displays the young Turner’s skill as a draftsman, rather than as a colorist. His early training under the topographical artist Thomas Malton shows in this meticulous study of the buildings clustered around Lambeth Palace, a red brick building erected in the late 15th century, then as now the London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The building in the foreground, which appears to be a public house called The White Swan, has since been demolished. In the version of this work shown at the Royal Academy, the empty street is populated with strolling figures, while a man and woman converse through the open window of the pub. The long shadows, as well as faint rose tones over the river Thames at the left of the painting indicate that the time is near sunset. Turner would become famous for his sunsets, which he employed to great aesthetic and symbolic effect in works such as "The Fighting Temeraire" (1839), and "The Slave Ship" (1840). The modest pink clouds in this early work are an intriguing prologue to the great color work of his later years.

The Cranbrook watercolor has faded due to sun exposure, resulting in a loss of color overall, especially evident in the areas of sky. Conservation treatment in 1985 reduced the yellowing of the paper, but was unable to restore the faded pigment.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
September 2024