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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Würzburg, Rhine and Ostend Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?A Church among Trees 1840

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?A Church among Trees’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 2 Verso:
?A Church among Trees 1840
D30463
Turner Bequest CCCIII 2a
Pencil on flecked pale blue laid paper, 104 x 170 mm
Partial watermark: Tree of Liberty
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘D[?reflin]’ top centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing was made with the page turned horizontally. Finberg read Turner’s scrawled note above it as ‘Dreflin (?)’,1 but beyond the capital ‘D’ it is very difficult to interpret in relation to the slight sketch, which appears to show a church or other substantial building among trees, likely with a low tower at the left.
The adjacent folios 3 recto and verso (D30464–D30465) show the Flemish city of Mechelen (Malines), falling with a few other subjects within a long sequence otherwise comprising coastal views at Ostend, some seventy miles further on (see under folio 1 recto; D30460).2 These marked the end of Turner’s long Continental itinerary, and the present page may show a Flanders subject in their vicinity.

Matthew Imms
September 2018

1
Finberg 1909, II, p.978.
2
See also Powell 1995, pp.72, 82 note 71, 246.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?A Church among Trees 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-a-church-among-trees-r1196223, accessed 21 November 2024.