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

The drawing is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation. Eton College, dominated by its Perpendicular Gothic chapel, is seen to the south-west from the bridge (indicated with a ‘B’) carrying the Slough Road over the Common Ditch beside the playing fields just west of the River Thames; the view remains recognisable today. At the top left is a thumbnail sketch of trees and a distant building, possibly nearby Windsor Castle (see under folio 2 recto; D20598), and at the top centre a detail of the east end of the chapel and one of the turrets of Lupton’s Tower below on its near side. There is a similar prospect on the verso (D20602); for other views in the area see under D20598.

Turner had first sketched the prospect around the turn of the century in the Fonthill sketchbook (Tate D02212; Turner Bequest XLVII 35), the basis of the untraced watercolour1 engraved in 1803 as Eton, from the Slough Road for William Byrne’s Britannia Depicta (Tate impression: T05941); see also Tate D02213 (Turner Bequest XLVII 36). Compare also the view of about 1806–8 in the Windsor and Eton sketchbook (Tate D06075; Turner Bequest XCVII 4), and see under folio 10 recto (D20610) for Turner’s Eton design for his own Picturesque Views in England and Wales, where further sketches are also noted.