Joseph Mallord William Turner Ashburnham Place, a Timber Wagon in the Foreground ?1810
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 44 Verso:
Ashburnham Place, a Timber Wagon in the Foreground ?1810
D10311
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 68
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 68
Pencil on white wove paper, 181 x 228 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘line on Road’ above horizon at upper left and ‘line of Sea’ left of centre
Stamped in black ‘CXXXVII 68’ bottom right
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘line on Road’ above horizon at upper left and ‘line of Sea’ left of centre
Stamped in black ‘CXXXVII 68’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Exhibition history
1879
Oxford Loan Collection, University Galleries, Oxford, 1879 until at least 1909 (86–161b, as ‘Park Scene, Foreground’).
1974
Turner 1775–1851, Royal Academy, London, November 1974–March 1975 (130).
1990
The Third Decade: Turner Watercolours 1810–1820, Tate Gallery, London, January–April 1990 (50).
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.I, p.396, CXXXVII 68, as ‘Valley of Ashburnham’.
1974
Martin Butlin, Andrew Wilton and John Gage, Turner 1775–1851, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy, London 1974, p.66.
1975
Andrew Wilton, Turner in the British Museum: Drawings and Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, London 1975, p.48.
1979
Andrew Wilton, The Life and Work of J.M.W. Turner, Fribourg 1979, p.348.
1981
Eric Shanes, Turner’s Rivers, Harbour and Coasts, London 1981, p.152.
1990
Diane Perkins, The Third Decade: Turner Watercolours 1810–1820, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1990, p.43 reproduced.
1990
Eric Shanes, Turner’s England 1810–38, London 1990, pp.31, 282 note 7.
2000
Eric Shanes, Evelyn Joll, Ian Warrell and others, Turner: The Great Watercolours, exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, London 2000, p.103.
Continued on folio 45 (D10313; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 69), this formed the basis of the watercolour the Vale of Ashburnham (British Museum, London)1 dated 1816, made for John Fuller and engraved by William Bernard Cooke in 1817 for Views in Sussex. In his letterpress to Cooke’s plate Ramsay Richard Reinagle enthused: ‘The whole is happily composed, if I may use the term. The eye of the spectator, on looking at this beautifully painted scene, roves with an eager delight from one hill to another, and seems to play on the dappled woods till arrested by the seat of Lord Ashburnham’.
Ashburnham Place appears in the middle distance and far away on the horizon are Pevensey Bay and Beachy Head. In the foreground, oxen are hauling a timber wagon. Turner retained these in the watercolour, together with the stripped trunk of a tree sketched in the foreground of D10313, as an allusion to the felling of woodland to provide fuel for iron-smelting at Ashburnham Forge. As Eric Shanes has pointed out,2 the forge closed in 1813 but was still functioning when Turner made his drawings of the estate in 1810. For a possible drawing of the forge in this sketchbook, see folio 13 verso (D10226; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 12a).
David Blayney Brown
March 2011
How to cite
David Blayney Brown, ‘Ashburnham Place, a Timber Wagon in the Foreground ?1810 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www