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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Vale of Heathfield Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Ashburnham Forge; Pevensey Bay in the Distance ?1810

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Ashburnham Forge; Pevensey Bay in the Distance’ ?1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 13 Verso:
?Ashburnham Forge; Pevensey Bay in the Distance ?1810
D10226
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 12a
Pencil on white wove paper, 181 x 228 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Blacksmith’ below a building lower centre, and illegibly within trees lower right of centre
Blind-stamped with the Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted and continued on folio 14 (D10227; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 13) this is perhaps a view of Ashburnham Forge near Ashburnham Place, in the light of Turner’s inscription below the building in the immediate foreground. The Ashburnhams were ironmasters as well as landowners, deriving much of their fortune from iron-smelting. Their forge was situated in a dip, as seen here. The forge closed in 1813 but, as Eric Shanes has pointed out, Turner must have been aware of it when he made his drawings in 1810.1 For a view of the Ashburnham Place estate, with a timber wagon presumably collecting fuel for the forge, see folios 44 verso–45 (D10311–D10313; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 68–9).

David Blayney Brown
March 2011

1
Eric Shanes, Turner in 1066 Country, exhibition catalogue, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Hastings 1998, p.11.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘?Ashburnham Forge; Pevensey Bay in the Distance ?1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2011, 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-ashburnham-forge-pevensey-bay-in-the-distance-r1131267, accessed 17 July 2024.