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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > West Country and Yorkshire 1814-17 > Devon Rivers, No.1 Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Ruined Gateway, Possibly at Launceston Priory 1814

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Ruined Gateway, Possibly at Launceston Priory’ 1814
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 113 Verso:
A Ruined Gateway, Possibly at Launceston Priory 1814
D09604
Turner Bequest CXXXII 113a
Pencil on white wove paper, 90 x 152 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, Turner has recorded an overgrown Norman archway. The main entrance to the White Hart Hotel in Launceston is set within a Norman arch, reputedly removed from the towns’ priory,1 of which little remains. Although the hotel’s doorway appears to be a narrower and more elaborately decorated arch, the present drawing may show another entrance to the priory. It is also possible that the site is elsewhere in Cornwall or Devon, as various drawings on the versos towards the back of this sketchbook do not necessarily relate to the sequence on the rectos.
For further views of Launceston on adjacent pages, see under folio 106 recto (D09596).

Matthew Imms
June 2014

1
See Nikolaus Pevsner, Cornwall, The Buildings of England, 2nd ed., revised by Enid Radcliffe, London 1970, p.98.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Ruined Gateway, Possibly at Launceston Priory 1814 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, June 2014, 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-a-ruined-gateway-possibly-at-launceston-priory-r1147153, accessed 26 April 2024.