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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797 ... > Architectural Drawings for Commissions > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Oxford: The Front of All Souls College, and Part of University College c.1798

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Oxford: The Front of All Souls College, and Part of University College’ c.1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Oxford: The Front of All Souls College, and Part of University College c.1798
D02359
Turner Bequest L R
Pencil on white wove paper, 144 x 205 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘5 Flowers’ bottom right, descending vertically
Inscribed in red ink ‘L.R.’ bottom right (smudged)
Stamped in black ‘L – R’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner scholar Colin Harrison considers that these studies were made ‘some years later’ than the view of Oxford’s High Street (Tate D08219; Turner Bequest CXX F), specifically for the oil painting High Street, Oxford that Turner executed in 1809–10 as a commission for James Wyatt, the Oxford frame-maker and print-dealer (private collection, on loan to Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).1
The building to the left is a corner of University College. Arranged in a double row down one side of the sheet are notes of grotesque label-stops on the front of All Souls, which Harrison describes as ‘a rare example of Turner in light-hearted mood’.2 A further study of the gate of All Souls is on the verso (D40193).

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.73–4 no.102, pl.109 (colour).
2
Harrison 2000, p.81.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Oxford: The Front of All Souls College, and Part of University College c.1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-oxford-the-front-of-all-souls-college-and-part-of-university-r1174102, accessed 24 November 2024.