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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > The House and Grounds at East Cowes ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner East Cowes Castle from the West, with Figures among Trees near the Steps below the Conservatory 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘East Cowes Castle from the West, with Figures among Trees near the Steps below the Conservatory’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
East Cowes Castle from the West, with Figures among Trees near the Steps below the Conservatory 1827
D20844
Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 41
Chalk and ink on blue wove paper, 190 x 140 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘41’ bottom left, descending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXXVII(a) 41’ bottom left, descending vertically
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The scene is near the foot of the steps below the smaller of East Cowes Castle’s two conservatories, with its arcaded south-western façade near the centre. The octagonal white tower to its right was actually some way beyond across a lawn level with the top of the steps. This drawing can be related to the painting Boccaccio Relating the Tale of the Birdcage, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1828 (Tate N00507);1 see also Tate D20826 and D20832 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 23, 29). While differing in its specifics, the present sketch is the most directly comparable in its composition and spirit with the upright painting, presenting an elegant gathering in a glade below white towers.
The nebulous associations which may have caused Turner to link the modern, albeit medieval-style East Cowes with the Italian early Renaissance poet Boccaccio (1313–1357) and his Decameron story cycle of about 1351 (which does not feature a birdcage) are discussed by Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll in their entry for the painting.2 The artist was probably also thinking of the work of his contemporary Thomas Stothard (1755–1834) in such paintings as Sans Souci, exhibited in 1817 (Tate N01829), and through him of Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) the originator of the Rococo ‘fête galante’ genre (a development of the rustic ‘fête champêtre’ mode). Watteau was referenced directly in the 1831 oil Watteau Painting by Fresnoy’s Rules (Tate N00514),3 which specifically addressed the issue of the spatial effect of areas of white in a painting, whether advancing or receding in relation to adjacent colours, an effect Turner may have had in mind while introducing strong white highlights into his blue paper East Cowes subjects. The distant white castle tower certainly makes its presence felt in the subsequent painting, and an elemental ‘colour beginning’ of a white tower against a blue sky of about that time (D25134; CCLXIII 12) may be related.
In terms of the foreground figures, compare the colour study of a gathering in a sunlit clearing (D22722; CCXLIV 60), probably showing the surroundings of East Cowes Castle; see also the sequence of couples wandering in the woods discussed under D20809 (CCXXVII a 6).
This is among dozens of blue paper studies made in and around the house, presumably during the same visit. For more on the various aspects of the building (demolished in about 1950), and its lost grounds as depicted by Turner, see the Introduction to this subsection, which touches on Turner’s possible introduction of imaginary elements to his topographical survey.
1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.151–2 no.244, pl.245 (colour).
2
See ibid.
3
Ibid., p.192 no.340, pl.341; for Watteau and Turner see Whittingham 1985, pp.2–24, and the second part of that article, Turner Studies, vol.5, no.2, Winter 1985, pp.28–48; see also Graham Reynolds, ‘Turner at East Cowes Castle’ in Victoria and Albert Museum Yearbook, vol.I, London 1969, p.74, Gerald Finley, Angel in the Sun: Turner’s Vision of History, Montreal and Kingston [Canada] 1999, p.121, and David Solkin, ‘Competing with Contemporaries’ in Solkin (ed.), Turner and the Masters, exhibition catalogue, Tate Britain, London 2009, pp.192–3.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil ‘Box 93’ bottom left, and ‘D20844’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘East Cowes Castle from the West, with Figures among Trees near the Steps below the Conservatory 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-east-cowes-castle-from-the-west-with-figures-among-trees-r1182707, accessed 15 February 2025.