Joseph Mallord William Turner The Garden at St Anne's Hill, near Chertsey c.1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 25 Verso:
The Garden at St Anne’s Hill, near Chertsey c.1827
D20588
Turner Bequest CCXXV 25
Turner Bequest CCXXV 25
Pencil on white wove paper, 116 x 222 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘L’, ‘o’ and ‘[?ivy]’ towards bottom left, and ‘[?ov]’ centre right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXV – 25’ bottom right
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘L’, ‘o’ and ‘[?ivy]’ towards bottom left, and ‘[?ov]’ centre right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXV – 25’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1878
Oxford Loan Collection, University Galleries, Oxford 1878–1909 or later (124; renumbered 99b, as ‘[Poems] Pencil sketch for the Arbour’).
References
1904
E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn eds., Library Edition: The Works of John Ruskin: Volume XIII: Turner: The Harbours of England; Catalogues and Notes, London 1904, p.564 (Oxford loans catalogue, 1878) no.99, as ‘(Poems) Pencil sketch for the Arbour’.
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.694, CCXXV 25, as ‘The Garden, St. Anne’s Hill. See Vignette, Rogers’s Poems 1834’.
1975
Mordechai Omer, Turner and the Poets: Engravings and Watercolours from his Later Period, exhibition catalogue, Marble Hill House [Greater London Council], Twickenham 1975, p.[25] under no.50.
1975
Andrew Wilton, Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London 1975, p.114 under no.182.
1976
Mordechai Omer, Turner und die Dichtkunst: Aquarelle; Graphik, exhibition catalogue, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich 1976, p.29 under no.50.
This view is in the garden of Charles James Fox’s villa at St Anne’s Hill, near Chertsey in Surrey. It was the basis of a vignette watercolour (Tate D27688; Turner Bequest CCLXXX 171),1 engraved for page 214 of the 1834 edition of Samuel Rogers’s Poems (Tate impressions: T05123, T06169)2 as the tail-piece to ‘Lines Written in Westminster Abbey, October 10, 1806’ (‘After the Funeral of the Right Hon. Charles James Fox’); the engraving is generally referred to as St Anne’s Hill (II). For more on Fox, St Anne’s Hill and Rogers, see the sketchbook’s Introduction.
In the vignette, the broad view here was condensed into a squarish composition with the left-hand trellis brought nearer to the urn, and the right-hand tree trunk replaced by more trellis with the wire framework of an arch overhead; a curved seat was introduced in the foreground within the arbour, with books and a parasol to suggest a human presence, and flowers growing up the trellis. (See also the partial elevation of an urn and pedestal on folio 29 recto (D20593; Turner Bequest CCXXV 29.) As Rogers put it in his poem (page 213):
When in retreat he laid his thunder by,
For lettered ease and calm Philosophy,
Blest were his hours within that silent grove,
Where still his god-like spirit deigns to rove ...
For lettered ease and calm Philosophy,
Blest were his hours within that silent grove,
Where still his god-like spirit deigns to rove ...
Another engraving, St Anne’s Hill (I), was based on the drawing on folio 26 recto opposite (D20589).
Unusually, this leaf is stamped with its Turner Bequest number on the verso (i.e. the present face). The otherwise blank recto is inscribed in brown ink ‘61’ within a circle at the bottom right, in red ink ‘[?70] 970’ at the bottom left, possibly by John Ruskin, in connection with the loan of the page to Oxford, and also in ?blue pencil ‘202’ at the top centre (partly erased).
Matthew Imms
August 2014
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘The Garden at St Anne’s Hill, near Chertsey c.1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www