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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country 1811 > Devonshire Coast, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Bradley Manor, near Newton Abbot 1811

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Bradley Manor, near Newton Abbot’ 1811
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 77 Verso:
Bradley Manor, near Newton Abbot 1811
D08511
Turner Bequest CXXIII 74a
Pencil on white wove writing paper, 75 x 117 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Bradley’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Bradley Manor, a medieval house now owned by the National Trust, is situated in woodland on the south-west outskirts of Newton Abbot, about half a mile east of Ogwell Mill; see folios 76 recto and verso and the recto of the present leaf (D08508–D08510; CXXIII 73, 73a, 74). Its subject confirmed by Arthur Ebdon,1 it is seen from the east in Turner’s slight sketch with the gatehouse block (demolished in 1842),2 its archway in shadow, and the series of gable-ends on the entrance front beyond. There appears to be a separate sketch or sketches of architectural details on the right.
An engraving by Frederick Nash published in Daniel and Samuel Lysons’s Devonshire (London 1822), the sixth volume of their Magna Britannia,3 shows the gatehouse and high wall in front of the house as indicated in Turner’s sketch, while a 1795 watercolour by John Swete shows the house in its wooded valley setting (Devon Record Office, Exeter).4 It is mentioned in Turner’s notes on West Country sites from a recent edition of John Feltham’s Guide to All the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places in the Vale of Heathfield sketchbook, probably in preparation for the 1811 tour, as ‘Bradley an ancient Gothic House the property of Tho Lane Esqr’5 (Tate D10206; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 1).

Matthew Imms
June 2011

1
Ebdon 2005, p.5.
2
[Diana Woolner], Bradley, Devon, London 1989, p.29.
3
Reproduced in [Diana Woolner], Bradley Manor, Devon: A Property of the National Trust, London 1955, opposite p.13; see also anonymous drawing in Woolner 1989, pl.VI.
4
Woolner 1989, front cover (colour).
5
For Lane see Woolner 1989, p.18.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Bradley Manor, near Newton Abbot 1811 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 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/joseph-mallord-william-turner-bradley-manor-near-newton-abbot-r1136988, accessed 19 April 2024.