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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales and the Marches 1792-4 > Drawings and Watercolours Connected with ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View from the Top of Craig y Foel 1792

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View from the Top of Craig y Foel’ 1792
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
View from the Top of Craig y Foel 1792
D00139
Turner Bequest XII J
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 210 x 274 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Graig a Vole’ centre left, descending vertically
Stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Inscribed in red ink ‘XII.J(b)’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The inscription perhaps identifies the subject as a view at Craig y Foel, near Rhaiadr (compare the small watercolour of 1792, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford);1 but there are similarities with the subject of Tate D00368 (Turner Bequest XXII O), not only in the dominating rock but in the apparent presence of buildings, in this case two high towers and a gabled structure, in the valley beyond. However, the distant view may be unrelated to the study of the hilltop.
The colouring, which has affinities with work in the South Wales sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest XXVI), may be rather later than the drawing. Finberg, who catalogued this as the verso of the sheet, suggested that the viewpoint was the ‘hill opposite Crickhowell, looking across the Usk’.2 The idea probably derived from his belief that the drawing on the verso (D40038) shows Crickhowell church, which is not the case.
There is a strip of colour trials along the left-hand edge of the sheet.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.303 no.29, reproduced.
2
MS note, Tate catalogue files.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘View from the Top of Craig y Foel 1792 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-view-from-the-top-of-craig-y-foel-r1141125, accessed 21 November 2024.