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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Hastings Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Oxford; Tower and Chapel of Magdalen College and other Architectural Details 1809

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Oxford; Tower and Chapel of Magdalen College and other Architectural Details’ 1809
Folio 47 Verso:
Oxford; Tower and Chapel of Magdalen College and other Architectural Details 1809
D07667
Turner Bequest CXI 47a
Pencil on white wove paper, 88 x 110 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘B ... ?2 M’ lower left of centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. Among other details of a gate and an oriel window, Turner has sketched the west end of Magdalen College Chapel at upper left and Magdalen Tower on the right, both as seen from the High Street.
See notes to folio 43 verso (D07659) for Oxford views in this sketchbook and their relationship to Turner’s picture View of the High-Street, Oxford painted for James Wyatt (Loyd Collection; on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).1 Looking west to Carfax, this picture did not require sketches of Magdalen, at the opposite end of the High, but Turner already envisaged a companion subject. In April 1810 he wrote to warn Wyatt that ‘in case it should be determined to try the other end of the High St’ there would be a delay of at least three years before it could be engraved.2 A companion was painted, but was the more rural View of Oxford from the Abingdon Road (private collection)3 based on a later drawing (Tate D17151; Turner Bequest CXCV (a) A), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812 and engraved in 1818.

David Blayney Brown
April 2011

1
Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner, revised ed., New Haven and London 1984, pp.73–4 no.102 (pl.109).
2
Turner to James Wyatt, postmarked 6 April 1810, in John Gage ed., Collected Correspondence of J.M.W. Turner with an Early Diary and a Memoir by George Jones, Oxford 1980, p.43.
3
Butlin and Joll 1984, p.88 no.125 (pl.130).

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘Oxford; Tower and Chapel of Magdalen College and other Architectural Details 1809’, catalogue entry, April 2011, 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/oxford-tower-and-chapel-of-magdalen-college-and-other-architectural-details-r1131154, accessed 25 April 2024.