Exh. Turner’s Gallery 1809
Oil on canvas

Panoramic views of the burgeoning capital became increasingly common in the nineteenth century. Turner rarely chose to engage with the implications of the sprawl of the metropolis but seems to have shared contemporary anxieties regarding London’s encroachment onto the surrounding countryside. In this sweeping vista, looking north-west from Greenwich Park, London is relegated to the far distance, recognisable chiefly by the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral (designed by Sir Christopher Wren); he returned to this prospect many years later (no.74). The city’s urban presence is further minimised by the presence of deer peacefully residing in the royal parkland, so that the overwhelming sense of the painting is one of rural harmony.

He composed the following lines of verse to accompany the painting when it was first exhibited in 1809:

Where burthern’d Thames reflects the crowded sail,
Commercial care and busy toil prevail,
Whose murky veil, aspiring to the skies,
Obscures thy beauty, and thy form denies,
Save where thy spires pierce the doubtful air,
As gleams of hope amidst a world of care.

The ‘murky veil’ of coal-dust smog, marring the blue of the sky, represents an early vision of the city as a source of pollution. To offset the vague sense of unease suggested by the ‘doubtful air’, Turner offers an alternative focus of patriotic pride and hope. A shaft of sunlight illuminates the elegant architecture of the Royal Naval Hospital and Queen’s House at Greenwich and highlights the importance of naval power to Britain’s national security and wealth.