Joseph Mallord William Turner Inscription by Turner: A List of Works and Prices; Battlements, Possibly at Buckfast Abbey c.1814-16
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Inside Back Cover:
Inscription by Turner: A List of Works and Prices; Battlements, Possibly at Buckfast Abbey c.1814–16
D40883
Pencil on white wove paper with gilt edges, 179 x 254 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with list of works and prices top left (see main catalogue entry)
Inscribed by Turner in pencil with list of works and prices top left (see main catalogue entry)
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.381, CXXXIV ‘inside of the end cover’, as ‘two slight sketches of battlements’, with transcription.
1980
David Hill, Stanley Warburton, Mary Tussey and others, Turner in Yorkshire, exhibition catalogue, York City Art Gallery 1980, p.40 under nos.51 and 52, p.42 under no.58, p.50 under no.75.
The following list appears in the top left corner:1
G. View of Farnley – 10
Newhall –––– 10
Pedigree –––– 20
Linley Lindley ––– 10
Porch –––– 10
House ––– 10
70
Newhall –––– 10
Pedigree –––– 20
Porch –––– 10
House ––– 10
70
The items are a watercolour and gouaches produced for Walter Fawkes of Farnley Hall, North Yorkshire (see under folio 1 verso; D09790; and also the Introduction to the sketchbook), with their prices in pounds or guineas. They are just a few of the many such works depicting the buildings, landscapes, fauna and historical artefacts associated with Farnley.2 David Hill (who has catalogued much of the contemporary Yorkshire material elsewhere in the present catalogue) once thought the Yorkshire sketches in the present book dated to about 1814 or 1815,3 but now considers them to relate to Turner’s 1816 visit; the finished designs probably date from then or a year or two later.
‘G. View of Farnley’ is probably the gouache Farnley Hall from the East (private collection),4 for which there is a study on folios 30 verso–31 recto of the present sketchbook (D09810, D09811; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 18a–19). ‘G’ could perhaps stand for ‘general’ or ‘garden’ – if the latter, then this reference might instead be to the flower garden view noted below.
‘Pedigree’ is probably the watercolour frontispiece to the Fawkes Fairfaxiana album, dated 1815, later separated from the other Turner illustrations in it and now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.6 It is smaller than the other works on the present list, but the higher price presumably reflects its complexity and fine detail.
‘Lindley’ is perhaps the distant gouache view of Lindley Hall from Lake Tiny (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery);7 see the sketches on folios 5 verso–6 recto of the present sketchbook (D09802, D09792; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 12v–3) and in the Devon Rivers, No.2 sketchbook (Tate D09784, Turner Bequest CXXXIII 81a). It might alternatively be the gouache of the façade of Lindley Hall itself (private collection). Although Andrew Wilton has dated the latter to about 1818 or possibly ‘rather later’8 by association with other views of Lindley Hall in the dispersed Munro sketchbook, the composition is taken directly from the drawing on folio 2 recto of the present book (D09803; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 13).
‘House’ is probably the gouache painting of The East Front of Farnley Hall, with the Flower Garden and a Sundial (private collection).10 There are no identified pencil studies of this view, which is a close-up of the right-hand side of the façade shown in the wider view from the east referred to above. If the ‘G’ of ‘G. View’ in the first item on the list stands for ‘garden’, then that might alternatively be to the present flower ‘g’arden view. The bay window and mullion windows had been removed from Lindley Hall (see above) in about 1814.
The two profiles of battlements are unidentified, but may be details observed at Buckfast Abbey, Devon, since much altered. For 1814 views around Buckfastleigh and Buckfast Abbey in this sketchbook, see under folio 22 recto (D09844; Turner Bequest CXXXIV 48).
Matthew Imms
July 2014
See Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.367–74 nos.582–635, and Hill and others 1980, pp.[34]–[53].
See Hill and others 1980, where Yorkshire pages in the sketchbook are assigned to c.1815 or c.1814–15.
Wilton 1979, p.373 no.630, reproduced, as c.1818; Hill and others 1980, p.42 under no.58, as ‘?1815’.
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Inscription by Turner: A List of Works and Prices; Battlements, Possibly at Buckfast Abbey c.1814–16 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www