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

Made with the page inverted according to the foliation, this drawing looks down on the spires of Oxford and beyond through a sparsely wooded area in the foreground.1 Turner’s inscriptions act as a topographical prompt; the distant town is annotated ‘Oxford’, and at the bottom in the centre ‘Bagley Wood’ is inscribed in large letters.

The branches of two trees in the foreground are laden with gestural swathes of foliage. This lends a clue to the question of the dates of Turner’s trip to visit his aunt in Sunningwell that occasioned studies of Oxford and the surrounding area in this sketchbook. It supports the notion put forward by James Hamilton that the visit followed the June death of J.M.W. Marshall, Turner’s uncle, dutifully swiftly.2 This page of the sketchbook demonstrates that the artist did indeed arrive with his relatives before the onset of the autumn months stripped the trees of their leaves. For further information about the circumstances of J.M.W. Marshall’s death and Turner’s subsequent inheritance, see the Introduction to the sketchbook. For additional presumed or identified views of Oxford and the surrounding area, see the inside front cover, and folios 1 recto and verso, 2 recto and verso, 17 recto, and then at the end of the sketchbook, on folios 87 verso and 88 recto (D40685, D17207–D17210, D17234, D17356–D17357).