Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
The Thames above Waterloo Bridge
Joseph Mallord William Turner British
Not on view
Although donated to the United Kingdom as part of the Turner Bequest in 1856, this canvas was first exhibited in 1906, when twenty-one of the artist’s unfinished works that had been in storage at Tate were put on view. It includes indistinct representations of the arches of Waterloo Bridge in the distant center, a ship’s crew at oar on the right, and probably a sooty smoke stack on the left. As it stands, the painting’s moodiness and lack of grandeur defy the conventional approach to a scene focused on a symbol of the nation’s victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.
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