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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > England and Wales Colour Studies c.1825 ... > Studies for Published 'England and ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Laugharne Castle c.1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Laugharne Castle’ c.1831
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
?Laugharne Castle c.1831
D25297
Turner Bequest CCLXIII 175
Watercolour on white wove paper, 307 x 489 mm
Inscribed in red ink ‘175’ bottom right
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCLXIII – 175’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This elemental colour study, comprising rapid, vigorous grey washes, has been compared by Eric Shanes with the watercolour Laugharne Castle of about 1831 (Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio),1 engraved in 1833 for the Picturesque Views in England and Wales as Langharne [sic], or Talacharne Castle, Caermarthenshire (Tate impressions: T06103, T06104).2 The composition is based on a pencil sketch of the castle seen from the south-west above the Taf Estuary in the 1795 South Wales sketchbook (Tate D00572; Turner Bequest XXVI 19).
Shanes notes that the England and Wales watercolour is ‘dismally faded, and the study can give us a strong idea of the sublime gloom’ of its original state.3 The identification of the present study, so loosely worked as it is, perhaps remains conjectural, but its fundamentals of a bright vertical form on the left flanked by cliff-like elements above breaking waves is directly comparable to the juxtaposition of the nearest tower and receding walls of the castle above the water in the finished design. Shanes has less convincingly proposed another ‘colour beginning’ (Tate D25318; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 196) as a variant study of Laugharne.4
See also the introductions to the present subsection of identified subjects and the overall England and Wales ‘colour beginnings’ grouping to which this work has been assigned.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.399 no.848, reproduced.
2
Shanes 1997, pp.27, 96, 105.
3
Ibid., p.27.
4
Ibid., p.96
Verso:
Blank (laid down and not examined).

Matthew Imms
March 2013

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?Laugharne Castle c.1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-laugharne-castle-r1144269, accessed 25 April 2024.