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

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

Joseph Mallord William Turner Market Street, Woodstock 1830

Image 1 of 2
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Market Street, Woodstock’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 3 Recto:
Market Street, Woodstock 1830
D21979
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 3
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘B[...]’ top right
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘3’ top right
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 3’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Gerald Wilkinson first correctly published this view as showing Woodstock,1 north-west of Oxford, which lies adjacent to the north-eastern side of Blenheim Park, not far from Blenheim Palace itself, shown on folio 2 verso opposite (D21978) and on subsequent pages. The subject had been earlier identified by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) and the watercolour and Turner scholar C.F. Bell (died 1966) in undated manuscript notes in copies of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.2
Turner’s vantage point is the corner of Oxford Street, as the main Oxford-Chipping Norton road is known at this point, looking west along Market Street, with the tower of St Mary Magdalene Church in Park Street terminating the view; the building in the right foreground is the King’s Arms Hotel. The scene remains recognisable, although the row of houses on the left has been somewhat altered and the building with a tower or cupola, on the near side of the surviving town hall, has been replaced.
At the top right are details of the church tower: a pinnacle and a classical arched window with carved swags below and a pinnacle.

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Wilkinson 1975, p.48.
2
A.J. Finberg, undated MS notes in a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.II, p.729; C.F. Bell, undated MS notes in another copy at the same location, vol.II, p.729.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Market Street, Woodstock 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-market-street-woodstock-r1148620, accessed 19 April 2024.