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

This colour study was identified as showing ‘Lichfield Cathedral’ by A.J. Finberg subsequent to his 1909 Turner Bequest Inventory;1 Andrew Wilton noted that it ‘apparently shows Lichfield and may therefore date from after the Midlands tour of 1830’, and relates it stylistically to Tate D25227 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 105), which shows a spire beyond water.2 A finished watercolour, Lichfield, made in about 1832 (private collection),3 was not engraved for Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales, although its format suggests it was produced for the series.

Turner had indeed visited the Staffordshire cathedral in 1830 (see the Kenilworth sketchbook, particularly Tate D22068; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 50a), but based the overall composition on a detailed pencil drawing from the south-west of 1794 (Tate D00365; Turner Bequest XXII L), which bears traces of pink and blue colour, perhaps accidentally deposited during Turner’s work on the present sheet or the finished design. Eric Shanes describes this study as among those ‘created simply to make a scene leap imaginatively and colourfully from a sketchbook page’.4 A ‘colour beginning’ of an alternative view, based on an 1830 sketch, is Tate D25221 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 99).

See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.

Verso:
Blank, save for an adventitious blot of dark blue-grey watercolour towards the top of the left-hand edge, and inscriptions: in pencil by ?Turner ‘27’ towards centre right, upside down; in pencil ‘AB 93 P’ top left, upside down; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram above ‘CCLXIII – 93’ bottom left; and in pencil ‘CCLXIII 93’ bottom right.