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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > East Anglia, Sussex and Yorkshire 1824 > Brighton and Arundel Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Royal Pavillion at Brighton from the Old Steine c.1824

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Royal Pavillion at Brighton from the Old Steine’ c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
The Royal Pavillion at Brighton from the Old Steine c.1824
D18370
Turner Bequest CCX 36
Pencil on white wove paper, 75 x 118 mm
Inscribed in blue ink by Ruskin ‘36’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCX 36’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Summarily rendered, this sketch is of Brighton Pavillion, the former royal residence of the Prince Regent (later George IV). Constructed between 1815 and 1823, the palace was designed by John Nash in the Indo-Saracenic Revival style.1 Its intricately decorated domes and minarets, sketched here in a cursory manner by Turner, incorporate Mughal and Islamic architectural elements. Such fanciful exoticism was fitting for the seaside holiday home of a Prince, and was certainly a foil to the mainstream, classicising Regency style. According to Ian Warrell, Turner took this sketch from the Old Steine green.2
This sketch is associated with Turner’s design Brighthelmstone, Sussex, engraved for the Southern Coast print series in 1825 (see Tate impression T04421).
For further sketches of Brighton in this book see Tate D18343–D18350, D18353–D18365, D18369–D18371; Turner Bequest CCX 20a–23a, 25a–33a, 35a–36a. See also Tate D22773; Turner Bequest CCXLIV 111 and N01986, N02064, T03886.

Alice Rylance-Watson
February 2015

1
‘History of the Royal Pavilion’, Brighton Museums, 17 February 2015, http://brightonmuseums.org.uk/royalpavilion/history/history-of-the-royal-pavilion
2
Ian Warrell, Turner in Brighton, exhibition pamphlet, Brighton Pavilion and Museums, Brighton and Hove 2013.

How to cite

Alice Rylance-Watson, ‘The Royal Pavillion at Brighton from the Old Steine c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, February 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, August 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-royal-pavillion-at-brighton-from-the-old-steine-r1181255, accessed 27 April 2025.