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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Midlands 1794-1802 > Drawings Made on the Midland Tour > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Wrexham Church from the East 1794

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Wrexham Church from the East’ 1794
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Wrexham Church from the East 1794
D00402
Turner Bequest XXIII b
Pencil on white wove paper, 175 x 111 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Tuttle St. | John Jenkins Baker’ top right, and ‘SIDEBOTTOM’ on shop-front within drawing
Stamped in black ‘XXIII b’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The parish church of St Giles in Wrexham boasts an early sixteenth-century tower of exceptional height – 135 feet (41 metres). Turner made no other drawings of the building, but this and a study of houses in the town on folio 18 (D00224) was used for a watercolour now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.1
1
Not in Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979; see James Hamilton, Turner’s Britain, exhibition catalogue, Gas Hall, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery 2003, pl.23 (colour).
Technical notes:
This sheet, now kept separately and listed by Finberg as Turner Bequest XXIII b, was a leaf apparently torn by Turner himself from the Matlock sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest XIX). A corresponding stub showing part of the church’s pinnacles survives as folio 17 recto in the sketchbook (Tate D41432; Turner Bequest XIX 16a), and the drawing continues a little way onto folio 16 verso (D41421).
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘XXIII b’ and ‘XXII b.’ bottom right.

Andrew Wilton
April 2012

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘Wrexham Church from the East 1794 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 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-wrexham-church-from-the-east-r1141043, accessed 23 April 2024.