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

Turner fills this page with three quick sketches of the landscape around Sunningwell, a village several miles south of Oxford where he had travelled to visit his widowed aunt after the death of her husband in 1820. His pencil annotation articulates the location, as per Finberg’s identification.1 St Leonard’s, the parish church, is visible towards the middle of the page. For more detailed information concerning Turner’s relationship with and frequenting of this area in the early 1820s, see the sketchbook Introduction.

The drawing at the top is a continuation of the dominant central view. It extends the main image to the left, repeating as a marker the distinctive distant hill and adopting again a reductive linear pencil wave below it. It is possible that the sketch at the bottom elaborates on the far right hand side of the central scene.

Additional presumed or identified views of Oxford and the surrounding area can be found on the inside front cover, and on folios 1 recto and verso, 2 recto, 5 recto, 17 recto, and then at the end of the sketchbook, on folios 87 verso–88 recto (D40685, D17207–D17209, D17214, D17234, D17356–D17357).

Technical notes:

Some slight blotted staining, probably evidence of droplets of water, is visible in the top left corner of the page. Below that, towards the bottom left corner, are brief indications of finger or thumb prints.