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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Midlands 1794-1802 > Matlock Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Wollaton Hall: Part of the South Front 1794

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Wollaton Hall: Part of the South Front’ 1794
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 34 Verso:
Wollaton Hall: Part of the South Front 1794
D00246
Turner Bequest XIX 34a
Pencil on white wove paper, 111 x 181 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Wollaton, near Nottingham, is one of the most spectacular of the ‘prodigy houses’ built in the decades about 1600. Its architect was probably Robert Smythson, who was certainly involved in its construction in the 1580s, for Sir Francis Willoughby. It had been the subject of a bird’s-eye view by Jan Siberechts (1627–c.1700; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven), and was perhaps of special interest to Turner’s generation on account of its self-consciously romantic ‘medievalising’ design, with window tracery and tourelles on the corners of the extraordinary raised central hall.
A second drawing of the house is on folio 35 verso (D00247). That and the present drawing are inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Wollaton Hall: Part of the South Front 1794 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-wollaton-hall-part-of-the-south-front-r1140764, accessed 30 June 2024.