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 Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park, near Virginia Water c.1827

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park, near Virginia Water’ c.1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 83 Recto:
Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park, near Virginia Water c.1827
D22132
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 81
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘G[...]’ below centre and ‘[?T]’ centre right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘81’ bottom left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 81’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Fort Belvedere stands on Shrubs Hill, near Sunningdale, overlooking Virginia Water about half a mile south of the Chinese Fishing Temple shown in many adjacent sketches. The folly-style brick building was built in the early 1750s for the Duke of Cumberland, probably by Isaac Ware (1704–1766). It was enlarged and altered for George IV between 1827 and 1829 by Sir Jeffry Wyattville (1766–1840) while working on nearby Windsor Castle. Turner shows the original three-sided tower, which formed the core of Wyattville’s considerably larger, rendered building.1
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, the sketch shows the tower’s unmodified form with trees to the south, as shown in The New Building on Shrubs Hill, engraved in 1772 after Thomas Sandby (1721–1798) and a 1776 drawing of The New Lodge (The Belvedere) by Michael Angelo Rooker (1743–1801; Royal Collection, Windsor Castle); Turner presumably drew it around 1827 at the latest. For other views around Virginia Water and their dating, see under folio 73 verso (D22113; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 71a).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
See ‘Fort Belvedere, Runnymede’, British Listed Buildings, accessed 3 June 2013, http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-289729-fort-belvedere-surrey.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park, near Virginia Water c.1827 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-fort-belvedere-in-windsor-great-park-near-virginia-water-r1148773, accessed 24 April 2025.