'Canterbury Cathedral: Becket's Crown and St Augustine's Chair', Joseph Mallord William Turner

Artwork details

Artist

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775‑1851)

Title

Canterbury Cathedral: Becket's Crown and St Augustine's Chair

From South Wales Sketchbook

Turner Bequest XXVI

Date 1798

MediumGraphite on paper

Dimensionssupport: 264 x 203 mm

Collection

Tate

Acquisition Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Reference

D00628

Turner Bequest XXVI 71 v

View this artwork by appointment, at Tate Britain's Prints and Drawings Rooms

Turner's sketchbooks

View this artwork in the South Wales Sketchbook

Catalogue entry

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851

Folio 68 Verso:

Canterbury Cathedral: Becket’s Crown and St Augustine’s Chair 1798

D00628
Turner Bequest XXVI 71v

Pencil on white wove paper, 264 x 203 mm

References

Finberg listed this originally as ‘Hereford Chair, Hereford Cathedral’, but later identified it correctly. ‘Becket’s Crown’ (Corona) was built under the direction of William the Englishman in 1182–4. St Augustine’s chair, of Purbeck marble, dates from the thirteenth century (it is no longer in St Anselm’s Chapel, but has been returned to its original position at the east end of the Choir).

Turner had exhibited a watercolour of the exterior of this part of the Cathedral under the title St Anselm’s Chapel, with Part of Thomas-à-Becket’s Crown, Canterbury Cathedral, at the Royal Academy in 1794 (Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester, D113.1892);1 he seems to have made it for his mentor Dr Thomas Monro (1759–1833), and bought it back from Monro’s sale in 1833.

The drawing is inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation.

Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.307 no.55; Charles Nugent and Melva Croal, Turner Watercolors from Manchester, exhibition catalogue, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis 1997, reproduced in colour p.31.

Technical notes:

There are some watercolour smears at the edges from the subject on folio 69 recto opposite (D00629; Turner Bequest XXVI 72).

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

Read this catalogue entry in full

This catalogue entry is part of: David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, December 2012.