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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Thames sketchbooks c.1804-14 > Wey, Guildford Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Eton College Chapel from Romney Lock Island with the Old Weir to the Left 1805

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Eton College Chapel from Romney Lock Island with the Old Weir to the Left’ 1805
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 136 Verso:
Eton College Chapel from Romney Lock Island with the Old Weir to the Left 1805
D06358
Turner Bequest XCVIII 136a
Pencil on white laid paper, 117 x 182 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. As Hill observes, the view is from near the head of Romney Lock Island, looking north-north-west towards Eton. Folio 135 verso (D06356) looks from a similar spot in the opposite direction towards Windsor Castle. Here, the weir is seen on the left. Of Eton College Chapel, Hill notes that Turner ‘fudged’ its east end and ‘forgot the roof altogether’.1 Nevertheless, the sketch served as the basis of The Thames at Eton (Tate T03873; displayed at Petworth House),2 exhibited at Turner’s Gallery in 1808. In the picture, Turner also generalised the east end and omitted the roof while moving the whole building further to the left and emphasising the river and its banks below the weir.

David Blayney Brown
July 2008

1
Hill 1993, p.133.
2
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, p.55 no.71 (pl.81).

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Eton College Chapel from Romney Lock Island with the Old Weir to the Left 1805 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2008, 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-eton-college-chapel-from-romney-lock-island-with-the-old-r1130542, accessed 25 April 2024.