J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Berwick Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Sketch of an Interior; and the Town Hall, Berwick-upon-Tweed 1831

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Sketch of an Interior; and the Town Hall, Berwick-upon-Tweed’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 9 Verso:
Sketch of an Interior; and the Town Hall, Berwick-upon-Tweed 1831
D25658
Turner Bequest CCLXV 9a
Pencil on white wove paper, 96 x 59 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the book turned to the right is a sketch of an interior. The view is of the corner of a room with perhaps a mirror above a fireplace. The sketch may be related to a similar drawing on folio 63 (D25756), which may have been made at Abbotsford. (See Tate D25957; Turner Bequest CCLXVII 16a for information about Turner’s Abbotsford sketches).
At the right of the page is a sketch of Berwick-upon-Tweed’s Town Hall as seen from Marygate. The spire of the building appears in the background of Turner’s watercolour, Berwick-upon-Tweed circa 1832 (whereabouts unknown).1 On 10 August 1831 Turner stayed just a hundred yards or so away at the King’s Arms on Hide Hill.2
For further sketches of Berwick in this sketchbook see folio 13 verso (D25665).

Thomas Ardill
September 2010

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.430 no.1092.
2
Robert Cadell, ‘Abbotsford Diary’, Wednesday 10 August 1831, National Library of Scotland, MS Acc.5188, Box 1, folio 111; transcribed in Gerald E. Finley, ‘J.M.W. Turner and Sir Walter Scott: Iconography of a Tour’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol.31, 1972, p.384.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Sketch of an Interior; and the Town Hall, Berwick-upon-Tweed 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2010, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-sketch-of-an-interior-and-the-town-hall-berwick-upon-tweed-r1134021, accessed 18 May 2024.