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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Wales 1798 > Hereford Court Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Cilgerran Castle: Looking Downstream 1798

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Cilgerran Castle: Looking Downstream’ 1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 40 Recto:
Cilgerran Castle: Looking Downstream 1798
D01354
Turner Bequest XXXVIII 100
Pencil and watercolour with stopping-out on white wove paper, 229 x 332 mm
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram bottom right
Stamped in black ‘XXXVIII 100’ top right, ascending vertically
See the note to folio 37 recto (D01342; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 88). Turner’s viewpoint here is close under the castle ruins, and he includes a kiln or forge on the riverbank to the left. Stephen Hughes of the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales cites Professor D.G. Tucker of the University of Birmingham, in stating that the building may be a forge or ‘smithy’ which ‘may have survived some forgotten predecessor in the same locality’ as that of the Castle Slate Quarries’.1 Another forge or kiln occurs on folio 38 recto (D01279; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 28). Other views of Cilgerran are on folios 39 recto and 41 recto (D01280, D01281; Turner Bequest XXXVIII 28a, 29).
1
Letter to the author, 9 November 1982.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram; Finberg records a note ‘on back’, transcribed by Ruskin from ‘Turner’s note on margin of mount’ (subsequently discarded?):1
Mr Fidler 2 Feet by 17}
                                26}

Andrew Wilton
May 2013

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.88.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Cilgerran Castle: Looking Downstream 1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 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-cilgerran-castle-looking-downstream-r1173178, accessed 20 April 2024.