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 ... > Architectural Drawings for Commissions > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Stourhead: The Gothic Cross above the Lake ?1798

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Stourhead: The Gothic Cross above the Lake’ ?1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Stourhead: The Gothic Cross above the Lake ?1798
D01907
Turner Bequest XLIV e
Pencil and watercolour on white wove paper, 402 x 539 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom centre
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is an unfinished watercolour for a small group of views at Stourhead, presumably commenced for Sir Richard Colt Hoare, but never completed (see also Tate D01908, D01909; Turner Bequest XLIV f, g). These drawings, incomplete as they are, serve to demonstrate the range of Turner’s technical explorations at this date.
This view looks out over the lake from near the house and the Church of St Peter, a viewpoint opposite that of the other two drawings. The structure is Bristol High Cross, of 1373, which Henry Hoare the younger re-erected here in 1765. The domed building at the edge of the water is the Pantheon, designed by Henry Flitcroft (1697–1769) and built from 1753. Just visible below the lawn is part of the Five-Arch Bridge, constructed in 1762.1
Finberg quotes Turner’s title2 from the inscription on the verso (D40263).

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

1
For Stourhead in general see Kenneth Woodbridge, Landscape and Antiquity: Aspects of English Culture at Stourhead, 1718–1838, Oxford 1970. Nikolaus Pevsner, Wiltshire, The Buildings of England, Harmondsworth 1963, dates the removal of the High Cross from Bristol to Stourhead to 1780, and the Five-Arch Bridge to 1749.
2
Finberg 1909, I, p.109.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Stourhead: The Gothic Cross above the Lake ?1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, 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-stourhead-the-gothic-cross-above-the-lake-r1174079, accessed 21 November 2024.