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

The drawing is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, with two main views showing similar stretches of wooded shoreline. The upper is labelled ‘Ryde’, indicating the town on the north-east coast of the Isle of Wight, about seven miles east of island base at East Cowes Castle (see folio 16 verso; D20757). At the centre left is a separate study of the façade of a house, presumably in the same area. The building with Gothic tracery towards the bottom left and the other below it may be parts of Quarr Abbey, near the coast about a mile west of Ryde, since heavily rebuilt although some battered ruins still stand; compare The Remains of Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, Hants. The Property of John Fleming Esq., an engraving of about 1780 by Richard Godfrey.

There are other sketch in the neighbourhood of Ryde on folios 11 verso (D20750) and 43 verso (D20800; Turner Bequest CCXXVII 41a), and perhaps on folio 3 verso (D20738), and a view from the sea in the contemporary Windsor and Cowes, Isle of Wight sketchbook (Tate D20629; Turner Bequest CCXXVI 20a). Other likely island views are on folios 4 recto, 27 recto, 28 recto (D20739, D20774, D20776), 29 recto, 33 verso, 34 recto and 39 recto (D20803, D20781, D20783, D20791; Turner Bequest CCXXVII 43, 31, 32, 37); see also folio 34 verso (D20784; Turner Bequest CCXXVII 32a).

Technical notes:

There is some scratching out revealing the white paper through the fluid grey ground in the upper view, possibly to indicate figures.