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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Scotland 1831 > Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Liverpool from Birkenhead 1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Liverpool from Birkenhead’ 1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 6 Verso:
Liverpool from Birkenhead 1831
D25773
Turner Bequest CCLXVI 6a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 187 mm
Inscribed in pencil by Turner ?‘Homly’ upper centre left, ‘St Martin’centre, and ?‘whl’ centre right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Liverpool is depicted in this double-page sketch (continuing on folio 7; D25774), with a view of the busy port and town from Birkenhead across the Mersey to the west.1 Turner made a series of sketches from around Birkenhead and the seaside resort of New Brighton on his route north to Scotland via Manchester, Preston, the Lake District, Barnard Castle and Carlisle. At the left of the sketch on a hill above the town is the Church of St George in Everton, one of the first churches to use cast iron in its construction. St Martin-in-the-Fields Church (since demolished) is just to the right with its spire standing above the windmills on either side of it. In the foreground are the coastline of Birkenhead and several boats.
For more information about Turner’s visit to Liverpool see folio 1 verso (D25763).

Thomas Ardill
September 2009

1
Ardill 2009, pp.12–14.

How to cite

Thomas Ardill, ‘Liverpool from Birkenhead 1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2009, 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-liverpool-from-birkenhead-r1134140, accessed 19 April 2024.