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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Sandycombe Lodge c.1808-12 > Windmill and Lock Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Part of the Tower of St George's Church, Bloomsbury, London c.1808-11

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Part of the Tower of St George's Church, Bloomsbury, London’ c.1808-11
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 63 Verso:
Part of the Tower of St George’s Church, Bloomsbury, London circa 1808–11
D08042
Turner Bequest CXIV 63a
Pencil on white wove paper, 117 x 87 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This is a continuation from the drawing now bound as folio 66 recto (D08046), under which the subject is discussed. Finberg noted that his ‘pp. 61–73’, i.e. folios 61 recto–73 verso (D08038–D08057), ‘were all loose and in different bundles. Their sequence is therefore conjectural’.1 The verticals which stop abruptly a third of the way up the page correspond with those on D08046, which shows the tower of St George’s, Bloomsbury, London, looking up at a steep angle.
Were one to assume that the present leaf is in its correct original sequence as folio 63 verso, then the main part of the sketch, D08046, would have been on folio 64 verso, and Turner would have pushed it upwards to allow room for the continuation below seen here; in any case, the overall composition would originally have been bound as two successive rectos or versos.

Matthew Imms
January 2012

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.312.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Part of the Tower of St George’s Church, Bloomsbury, London c.1808–11 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2012, 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-part-of-the-tower-of-st-georges-church-bloomsbury-london-r1134821, accessed 26 April 2024.