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

Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. Finberg was the first to notice the similarity of this pony to the one in the right foreground of Turner’s picture The Forest of Bere (Tate T03875; displayed at Petworth House) exhibited at his own gallery, 1808. He says the pony is white but Butlin and Joll, endorsing the likely connection, call it grey.1 The pencil outline, needless to say, is no help in deciding the matter.

The picture has no other connection with this sketchbook, being based on scenery near Havant that Turner passed through on his way to or from Portsmouth, late in 1807 (see especially the Spithead sketchbook, Tate D06518–D06617; D06716–D06719; D40605–D40615; D40732; D41428–D41430; D41495; Turner Bequest C). But it does reflect the concern with rural activity and tendency to naturalism in Turner’s work at this period, encouraged by his stays at Hammersmith where he painted and sketched outdoors and in the summer-house in his garden. If Turner did indeed take his pony from this sketchbook, which he was using while at Hammersmith, it seems possible that The Forest of Bere was painted there rather than in his London studio.