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 of Fonthill Splendens from the West 1799

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘View of Fonthill Splendens from the West’ 1799
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
View of Fonthill Splendens from the West 1799
D02202
Turner Bequest XLVII 25
Pencil on white wove paper, 337 x 469 mm
Stamped in black ‘XLVII 25’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Fonthill Splendens was the large Palladian house built at Fonthill by William Beckford’s father, Alderman Beckford, using as architect a bricklayer named Hoare, after an earlier house had been destroyed by fire in 1755. The Alderman died in 1770; his son pulled Fonthill Splendens down in 1807, after he had built his ‘Gothic Abbey’. Only a ceremonial entrance gateway, a boathouse (see D02184; Turner Bequest XLVII 7) and some elaborate grottos survive of this ambitious scheme. The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally.
Technical notes:
For a proposed sequence for the leaves of the disbound Fonthill sketchbook, with this page as folio 14, see the Introduction.
Verso:
Blank

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘View of Fonthill Splendens from the West 1799 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-view-of-fonthill-splendens-from-the-west-r1174230, accessed 17 July 2024.