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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797 ... > Fonthill Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner View in the Park at Chalfont, Looking down on the House and the River Misbourne from the North-East c.1799

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Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
View in the Park at Chalfont, Looking down on the House and the River Misbourne from the North-East c.1799
D02179
Turner Bequest XLVII 2
Pencil on white wove paper, 332 x 469 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram below right of centre
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘X’ right of centre in the drawing
Stamped in black ‘XLVII – 2’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Finberg suggests that this view, made with the page turned horizontally, was taken from one of the windows of Fonthill Abbey, the setting of numerous drawings in this sketchbook,1 but the view is over the estate of Chalfont House, at Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire, looking down to the house (barely indicated in the trees towards the right), and the River Misbourne. The slopes in the foreground are now a golf course.
Turner produced a watercolour of the scene in about 1800, with grazing cattle and sheep, complementing a closer view of the house from another direction (both private collection);2 the other design was based on another study in this sketchbook (D02226; Turner Bequest XLVII 49), under which the subject is discussed.
1
Finberg 1909, I, p.120.
2
Not in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979.
Technical notes:
The sheet is discoloured from exposure. For a proposed sequence for the leaves of the disbound Fonthill sketchbook, with this page as folio 5, see the Introduction.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

Revised by Matthew Imms
February 2015

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘View in the Park at Chalfont, Looking down on the House and the River Misbourne from the North-East c.1799 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, revised by Matthew Imms, February 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-view-in-the-park-at-chalfont-looking-down-on-the-house-and-r1174221, accessed 21 November 2024.