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

This colour study has been linked by Eric Shanes to the watercolour Kilgarren [sic] Castle, Pembroke of about 1829 (private collection),1 engraved in 1829 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impression: T04540). David Hill has noted the ‘tentative’ status of Shanes’s identification,2 as has Shanes himself, particularly since the Pembrokeshire castle has two prominent towers, although the southern tower is pale in the brilliant dawn light of the England and Wales view from the north, partly eclipsed by the dark northern tower.3

There are various pencil and watercolour studies of the site above the River Teifi in the 1798 Hereford Court sketchbook (Tate D01279–D01281, D01342, D01354; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 28, 28a, 29, 88, 100) and a watercolour (Manchester Art Gallery)4 and oil paintings (National Trust;5 private collection;6 New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester;7 and currently untraced8) made within a year or so.

Tate D25270 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 148) has been tentatively proposed as another Cilgerran study. See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.

Technical notes:
Shanes notes that Turner has blended and removed colour towards the left using as sponge while the paper was damp, where the ‘tonal delicacy imparts a limitless feeling of space and a powerful sense of mystery’1 in conjunction with the silhouetted tower. The sheet is laid down on another of white wove paper, trimmed to exactly the same (slightly irregular) size.

Verso:
Blank, save for inscriptions: in pencil AB [?168] P M’ bottom right; in pencil ‘26’ in circle at centre and ‘CCLXIII – 19’ centre right; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram above ‘CCLXIII–19’ bottom centre; and in pencil ‘D25141’ bottom right.