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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Farnley Hall and Yorkshire c.1808-24 > Farnley and Related Subjects > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Design for the Farnley Hall series of Historical Vignettes and Fairfaxiana; 'Ruin of the Royal Cause...' c.1815-23

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Design for the Farnley Hall series of Historical Vignettes and Fairfaxiana; 'Ruin of the Royal Cause...'’ c.1815-23
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Design for the Farnley Hall series of Historical Vignettes and Fairfaxiana; ‘Ruin of the Royal Cause...’ c.1815–23
D12103
Turner Bequest CLIV E
Pencil on white wove paper, approximately 223 x 186 mm on sheet 223 x 372 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil as part of the design [as below]
Watermarked ‘G & R TURNER’
Inscribed in pencil ‘E’ bottom left
Stamped in brown ‘CLIV E’ bottom left
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This drawing is one of four (including Tate D12100, D12101, D12102; Turner Bequest CLIV B, C, D) on the front and back of a single sheet of paper, folded in half, and presently unmounted. Finberg 1909 listed each as separate items, and the individual drawings have been stamped with the Turner Bequest number individually. Consequently, they are catalogued separately here. For clarity, the present drawing is the left-hand drawing of the recto of the present sheet and D12100 (CLIV B) is the right half. D12101 and D12102 (CLIV C and D) are on the verso. See notes to D12100 for the historical background to these subjects, connected with the English Civil War, and their likely purpose as illustrations to a history of the period.
The present drawing is an unused design for the series and appears to have been a frontispiece to a section dealing with the Civil War, as inscribed; ‘Ruin of the Royal Cause | The King Prisoner | The King executed | The Protectorate’. The titles are let into a decorated tablet with at the top an axe crossed with a sword and the inscription ‘Marston Moor, Naseby’, under a tablet inscribed ‘6 – C | P’. Oliver Cromwell and Fawkes’s ancestor Charles Fairfax fought at the Battle of Marston Moor on 2 July 1644, one of the major turning points of the war.
Verso:
Blank

David Hill
July 2009

How to cite

David Hill, ‘Design for the Farnley Hall series of Historical Vignettes and Fairfaxiana; ‘Ruin of the Royal Cause...’ c.1815–23 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2009, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-design-for-the-farnley-hall-series-of-historical-vignettes-r1146604, accessed 25 April 2024.