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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1830-35 Annual tourist > Midlands 1830 > Birmingham and Coventry Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Woman's Head and Shoulders; the Eleanor Cross, Hardingstone 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Woman's Head and Shoulders; the Eleanor Cross, Hardingstone’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 71 Recto:
A Woman’s Head and Shoulders; the Eleanor Cross, Hardingstone 1830
D22459
Turner Bequest CCXL 71
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 68 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘[?H...]’ bottom right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘71’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXL – 71’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
There are three sketches here, all made with the page turned vertically. The rapid study of a woman turning towards the viewer with bare neck and shoulders, possibly wearing a bonnet or hat, occupies the central register, and was probably made before the landscape studies which appear to have been fitted in above and below. For other figure studies in this sketchbook, see under folio 1 verso (D22324).
The top sketch of trees, possibly with a low structure to the right, is effectively unidentifiable, but it may be in the vicinity of the Eleanor Cross at Hardingstone, near Northampton, shown flanked by trees in the slightly more substantial drawing at the bottom, which appears to be inscribed with an ‘H’ followed by a couple of letters, possibly an abbreviation of the place name. There are other sketches around the cross on folios 23 verso and 24 recto and verso (D22364–D22366).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘A Woman’s Head and Shoulders; the Eleanor Cross, Hardingstone 1830 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, 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-womans-head-and-shoulders-the-eleanor-cross-hardingstone-r1148609, accessed 26 April 2024.