Description
Water Cress Gatherers places rustic bridgework and structures at the left of a pale etched landscape, with a low pond and bank filling the foreground. The title identifies watercress gathering, connecting the watery ground with a modest human task. Turner allows the scene to remain open and lightly marked, giving its practical setting a graphic character different from the darker finished plates of the series.
Dated 1819, this impression is an etching only, before the first of three states, rather than an etching completed with mezzotint. Turner is credited with design and etching. The early printed form allows the composition to be read through its linear structure, preserving a stage before a fuller tonal treatment. The subject brings a modest task into a sustained visual field, and the medium gives that scene a directness different from the richly shaded impressions elsewhere in the series.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the J. M. W. Turner collection.
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