Joseph Mallord William Turner

One of Twenty Vignettes - The Andes (Illustration to 'The Pleasures of Hope')

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About this artwork

This vignette illustrates the lines: ‘Angel of life! Thy glittering wings explore/ Earth’s loneliest bounds, and Ocean’s wildest shore’. Turner depicts a lone ship in full sail, tossed by stormy seas. The bright star shown on the left represents hope, the guiding light to those in peril. The fearsome mountain range behind seems to include two smoking volcanoes, as well as a towering ice cap. The critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) hailed the engraving after this vignette produced by Edward Goodall as ‘one of the very noblest, most faithful, most scientific statements of mountain form which even Turner has ever made…’. Turner took great care in developing the composition, making a number of preparatory studies, now in the Turner Bequest at Tate.

Updated before 2020

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  • artist:
  • title:
    One of Twenty Vignettes - The Andes (Illustration to 'The Pleasures of Hope')
  • date created:
    About 1835
  • materials:
    Watercolour over pencil on paper
  • measurements:
    11.50 x 11.50 cm
  • object type:
  • credit line:
    Accepted by HM Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Gallery of Scotland, 1988
  • accession number:
    D 5154
  • gallery:
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Joseph Mallord William Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner