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

This page features two cursory outlines of a hilltop tower with a single window, showing the same building from differing vantage points. The scant topographical detail makes Turner’s precise location difficult to pinpoint. Both studies were executed with the sketchbook inverted. The subject is possibly Bramber Castle, a ruined Norman castle located a few miles inland from Shoreham in Sussex. Turner may have sketched this site during the same visit that produced the studies of Shoreham in the present sketchbook (see folios 5 verso, 6 recto and 62 verso–66 verso; D21861, D21862, D21964–D21972), as identified by Ian Warrell.1

Technical notes:

As noted by Finberg in his 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest, the opposite leaf, which he did not number, has been torn out,1 leaving a short stub with a wavy edge. As pencil strokes from the sketch on this page runs across the edge of the remnant and a little way onto folio 7 recto (D21864), it seems Turner tore out the leaf before composing this study, and it is not numbered or foliated in the present catalogue.