Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Sun Setting Over a Lake
Joseph Mallord William Turner British
Not on view
The exhibition history of this astonishing work, probably a depiction of Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne, is paradigmatic of the developing interest in the artist’s late work following his death. We do not know why it was left in his studio and surmise that the absence of identifiable landmarks indicate that it was not yet complete in 1851. Included in the Turner Bequest, it remained hidden until 1932. In 1966, the painting appeared, along with Margate(?) from the Sea (exhibited nearby), in "Turner: Imagination and Reality," an exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This exhibition cemented Turner’s influence among American abstract artists including Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler.
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