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

Turner had acquired land in Twickenham, on the west bank of the River Thames opposite Richmond, in 1807, and designed and built himself a small country house, Sandycombe Lodge, which was completed by 1813 and still stands in Sandycoombe [sic] Road.1 There are numerous working designs and sketches for it in the Turner Bequest, mostly in the Windmill and Lock and Sandycombe and Yorkshire sketchbooks (Tate; Turner Bequest CXIV, CXXVII) which are dealt with in a separate section of the present catalogue. The main sketch on the present page, in ink, shows the elevation of the garden front, looking west across the pond on Turner’s land. The central block is shown much as built, including an arched basement window. The short lines flanking the ground floor French window probably indicate the rooflines of the small flanking wings as originally built (an upper storey was later added to each). A detail of the central block is shown on folio 251 recto opposite (D08802; CXXIII 248).

The rough pencil drawing above shows Lundy Island, off Somerset, to the north from the Cornish coast near Bude. The sketch appears squeezed into the space above the Sandycombe view, implying that it was made afterwards. As it would have been drawn on the spot during Turner’s 1811 West Country tour, this implies that the ink drawing had also made earlier in the course of the tour, perhaps on an occasion when Turner had ink to hand while making the extensive drafts of poetry elsewhere in the sketchbook (see the introduction) and was meanwhile thinking of building work to be done on his return. For other views around Bude, see under folio 4 recto (D08368; Turner Bequest CXXIII 4). Lundy also appears on folios 201 recto and 226 recto (D08726, D08766; CXXIII 198, 223).