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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Midlands 1830 > Kenilworth Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Dudley from the South-East 1830

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Dudley from the South-East’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 64 Verso:
Dudley from the South-East 1830
D22096
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 62a
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Partial watermark ‘nard | 20’
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, Dudley Castle is seen across open ground from the south-east, with the outline of the tower of St Edmund’s Church below it towards the left and the spire of St Thomas’s on the far left beyond a conical chimney. Modern developments make the viewpoint difficult to establish, but a sense of the view is possible from around Watsons Green Road and Wolverton Road on Kates Hill, overlooking Dudley’s Southern Bypass.
There are similar views on the recto (D22095), folio 65 recto opposite (D22097; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 63) and other adjacent pages. Finberg1 thought the present, rather compressed variation related in particular to the watercolour Dudley, Worcestershire of about 1832 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight),2 engraved in 1835 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T05097, T06113, T06114), although the most detailed variation in the sequence, on folios 67 verso–68 recto (D22102, D22103; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 65a, 66) was perhaps the most fruitful source for the background, albeit with the rural foreground replaced by canalside industries.
For other views of Dudley see under folio 23 recto (D22016).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.731.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.400 no.858, pl.195.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Dudley from the South-East 1830 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-dudley-from-the-south-east-r1148737, accessed 29 January 2025.