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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Marine subjects c.1803-14 > Spithead Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner St Catherine's Hill, Guildford 1807

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘St Catherine's Hill, Guildford’ 1807
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 78 Verso:
St Catherine’s Hill, Guildford 1807
D06613
Turner Bequest C 73a
Pencil on off-white wove paper, 118 x 187 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘3’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘C 73a’ top right, inverted
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. For the several sketches of St Catherine’s Hill in this sketchbook see mainly folio 77 verso (D06611; Turner Bequest C 72a). This one served as the basis for Turner’s design (Tate D08137; Turner Bequest CXVII J) for the Liber Studiorum plate St Catherine’s Hill near Guildford, 1811. Forrester describes the sketch as a ‘spare shorthand record of a stark winter landscape’ and notes its transformation in the plate into ‘an idyllic summer pastoral’. However, trees still seem to be in leaf in other landscape subjects in the book and the ‘stark’ effect here may be the result of haste; the sketch is no more than an outline.

David Blayney Brown
May 2006

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘St Catherine’s Hill, Guildford 1807 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, May 2006, 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-st-catherines-hill-guildford-r1139147, accessed 19 April 2024.