Joseph Mallord William Turner The High Street, Oxford c.1837-9
Joseph Mallord William Turner,
The High Street, Oxford
c.1837-9
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
The High Street, Oxford c.1837–9
D25126
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 4
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 4
Watercolour on white wove paper, 361 x 487 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘4’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 4’ bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘4’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom centre
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 4’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1937
Display of Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Tate Gallery, London, December 1937–September 1939; [continuing after the Second World War],1945–December 1952 (no catalogue but frame number II: 23, as ‘High Street, Oxford’).
1963
Turner Watercolors from The British Museum: A Loan Exhibition Circulated by the Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, September–October 1963, Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, Texas, November 1963, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, December 1963–January 1964, Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, January–March 1964, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, March–April 1964, Brooklyn Museum, New York, May 1964, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, June–July 1964 (43).
1974
Turner 1775–1851, Royal Academy, London, November 1974–March 1975 (445, as c.1830–5).
1983
J.M.W. Turner: Studies for Finished Watercolours (c.1825–40): Watercolours from the Turner Bequest, Loaned by the British Museum, Tate Gallery, London, January–June 1983 (no catalogue).
1992
Turner: The Fifth Decade: Watercolours 1830–1840, Tate Gallery, London, February–May 1992 (24, reproduced in colour, as ‘Colour Study: The High Street, Oxford’, c.1837–9).
2000
Turner’s Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, June–September 2000 (57, reproduced in colour, as ‘High Street: Oxford: Colour Beginning’, c.1835–8).
2013
Turner: Works on Paper, Tate Britain, London, April 2013–ongoing (no catalogue).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.814, CCLXIII 4, as ‘Oxford High Street’. c.1820–30.
1974
Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, pp.26, 125 no.445. as c.1830–5.
1979
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.187, 191 note 31.
1984
Patrick Youngblood, ‘The Stones of Oxford: Turner’s Depiction of Oxonian Architecture 1787–1804 and After’, Turner Studies, vol.3, no.2, Winter 1984, p.18.
1987
John Gage, J.M.W. Turner: ‘A Wonderful Range of Mind’, New Haven and London 1987, fig.116B (colour). as c.1832–5.
1990
Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, pp.260 under no.225, 286 note 205.
1992
Anne Lyles, Turner: The Fifth Decade: Watercolours 1830–1840, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1992, reproduced in colour, p.28, pp.57–8 no.24, reproduced, as ‘Colour Study: The High Street, Oxford’. c.1837–9.
1997
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Watercolour Explorations 1810–1842, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.19, 26, 86, 95 Appendix I under ‘England and Wales Series’, as ‘Sketch for Oxford High Street’. c.1837, p.100 under ‘Oxford’, as ‘Sketch for an England and Wales series view of Oxford High Street’. c.1837, p.104 Appendix II, as ‘Sketch: [Oxford High Street]’.
2000
Colin Harrison, Turner’s Oxford, exhibition catalogue, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2000, pp.91, 105 no.57, as ‘High Street: Oxford: Colour Beginning’. c.1835–8), pl.25 (colour).
This is one of five loose colour studies (the others being Tate D25125, D25127, D25228, D25485; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 3, 5, 106, 362) showing the view west up Oxford’s High Street, comparable with that seen in the oil painting High Street, Oxford, exhibited in 1810 (private collection, on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)1 and engraved in 1812 (no Tate impressions). A sixth shows the view in the opposite direction (Tate D36316; Turner Bequest CCCLXV 26).
Andrew Wilton has suggested that the group of five was made between about 1830 and 1835, based on a pencil drawing in the 1830 Kenilworth sketchbook (Tate D21976; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 1a),2 made from the junction with Queen’s Lane, with The Queen’s College in the right foreground, University College further down the High Street on the left, the spire of St Mary’s Church beyond All Souls College on the right, and the spire of All Saints Church in the distance. There are separate sketches showing variations on the view, made in about 1798 (Tate D00666, D08219; Turner Bequest XXVII E, CXX F) and two later ones in the Oxford sketchbook, in use between about 1834 and 18383 (Tate D27903, D27908; Turner Bequest CCLXXXV 2a, 5a). Anne Lyles has noted that the Kenilworth sketch only corresponds closely with the present work and D25228 (CCLXIII 106).4
Wilton’s suggestion that the five colour studies were ‘almost certainly preliminary exercises’ towards a design for Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales has been followed by later commentators;5 his assertion that ‘the whole group was evidently done at one sitting’6 seems feasible. However, his dating of all five to the early 1830s is rendered impossible by the 1837 watermark of D25485 (CCLXIII 362), as is John Gage’s ‘c.1832/5’,7 relating them to the watercolour Christ Church College, Oxford of about 1832 (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford),8 engraved in that year for England and Wales (Tate impressions: T05094, T06108).
Lyles has suggested that the five studies actually represent two campaigns, with D25125 (CCLXIII 3, watermarked 1816) and D25127 (CCLXIII 5) having been made as early as ‘?c.1820–5’, and the others (including the one watermarked 1837) around ‘1837–9’.9 The first two, with their ‘colder colour ranges of blues, yellows and greys’,10 might have been for England and Wales, but as the project concluded prematurely in 1838 she argues that Turner would be have been unlikely to embark on further studies after 1837. Instead she proposes that the three further studies, including the present work, with their common ‘pinks, purples and blues’, might have been intended for a central Oxford counterpoint to the watercolour (Manchester Art Gallery)11 commissioned by the Oxford printseller James Ryman and engraved in 1841 as Oxford from North Hinksey.12 Tate D25220 (Turner Bequest CCLXIII 98) is a colour study related to the latter.
Eric Shanes has acknowledged the possibility of two phases of High Street views, without making any link from the second to Oxford from North Hinksey13 (see the introduction to this Oxford subsection for connections between a colour study for the latter and other views in the city). He has suggested that the existence of five variants suggests that Turner ‘encountered some fundamental problem with the design’.14 Colin Harrison has noted that the extensive studies show that ‘Turner attached a great deal of importance to this new view’, assuming that the five all date to the later 1830s, along with other Oxford colour studies: ‘They cannot be placed in any logical order, and, while some compositions correspond more closely with the sketches in the “Oxford” sketchbook, this is almost accidental.’15 Wilton observes that the ‘introduction of figures into two of the studies [here and in D25485 (CCLXIII 363)] shows that these variations on a single subject are not experiments in a vacuum’.16
A range of about 1837–9 has been assigned here, following Lyles. See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified but unrealised Oxford subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.
Verso:
Blank; inscribed in pencil by ?Turner ‘Not– [?Hd]–’ and ‘Mr D [?High]’ top right, descending vertically.
Blank; inscribed in pencil by ?Turner ‘Not– [?Hd]–’ and ‘Mr D [?High]’ top right, descending vertically.
Matthew Imms
March 2013
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘The High Street, Oxford c.1837–9 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, December 2013, https://www