Mortlake Terrace

Joseph Mallord William Turner

National Gallery of Art

Painted in golden tones of butter and harvest yellow, tawny brown, and olive green, this horizontal landscape painting has a low wall stretching diagonally from the lower right corner off to our left, dividing a river to our right from a grassy lawn to our left. The waist-high wall is lined with tall trees with high canopies, which fill most of the composition. Close to us, at the lower center of the painting, a hoop rests against the end of a second, low wall. A short ladder with four rungs leans against a tree trunk in the lower left corner. Only a sliver of the ivy-covered trunk rises along the left edge of the painting. A short distance away, two chairs near a small, square-topped wooden table sit on the grass under the long shadows of the tall trees. Two or three people, seeming to wear long skirts, stand or sit on the long wall that spans the width of the painting, behind a nearby tree trunk. A navy-blue garment lies over the wall to our right, and a black dog walks on the wall near the center of the painting, beyond the people. Barely visible, a small white dog stands with its front paws on the wall next to the black dog. A pathway alongside the trees and wall leads to a covered structure with a triangular pediment roof held up by fluted columns in the distance. Several long, low barges filled with people float in the river to our right. Red and white flags flutter in the breeze and the full, rectangular sails of a couple of the boats are raised. The placid surface of the river is thickly painted, especially where the small disk of the pale yellow sun reflects on the golden surface of the water below. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition and is lined in the deep distance with a band of loosely painted, muted, mauve-pink buildings and trees.