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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bringing in the Harvest: ?The Last Load at Cassiobury Park 1805-7

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 23 Verso:
Bringing in the Harvest: ?The Last Load at Cassiobury Park 1805–7
D05803
Turner Bequest XCIII 23a
Pen and ink and brown wash on white wove paper, prepared with a grey wash, 171 x 262 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
See Introduction to the sketchbook and notes to the recto (D05802) and folio 22 verso (D05801) for its various studies of (mainly rustic) figures, their character and context. In this instance, Finberg’s title and Hill’s represent opposing interpretations in which art-historical trends are likely to play a part. Assuming Turner was working backwards in the sketchbook at this point, Hill sees this subject, together with 24 verso (D05805)and 25 verso (D05807), as a ‘scene of desperate rural poverty’. He describes the title given in the 1974 Royal Academy catalogue as ‘misleading’, but while it is certainly bland, the authors do draw attention to similarities to Turner’s Harvest Home sketchbook (Tate D05351–D05375; D40273; D40342–D40343; Turner Bequest LXXXVI) which probably provides the best clue to the subject.
The Harvest Home sketchbook, with other drawings, is connected with unfinished pictures of harvest-time at Cassiobury Park, near Watford, the Hertfordshire estate of the Earl of Essex which Turner visited in late summer 1807 (see Sketchbooks and Drawings Connected with Cassiobury Park and Harvest Pictures for the Earl of Essex circa 1807–12). Turner made various drawings of the harvest, including a wagon loaded with hay, as seen here, and the harvest home. He also began two oils, Harvest Home (Tate N00562)1 and Cassiobury Park: Reaping (Tate N04663),2 in the first of which the laden wagon is visible through a barn door. In this drawing, it passes before what Hill calls ‘a mediaeval town gateway’ and is surrounded by crowds, the ‘subject of the disputation’. However, as the gateway looks very like the Gothic north-west gate of Cassiobury, these crowds are more likely to be estate workers bringing in the ‘last load’ and roused by the prospect of harvest food and drink than embroiled in a peasant revolt. Perhaps Turner was considering a third or alternative picture of the Cassiobury harvest, and if so the drawing would be a later addition to the sketchbook, dating from 1807.

David Blayney Brown
October 2007

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.128 no.209 (pl.208).
2
Ibid., p.128 no.209a (pl.209).

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Bringing in the Harvest: ?The Last Load at Cassiobury Park 1805–7 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, October 2007, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-bringing-in-the-harvest-the-last-load-at-cassiobury-park-r1130025, accessed 28 March 2024.