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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Kenilworth Castle: The Interior of the Great Hall with the Great Tower Beyond 1830

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 34 Recto:
Kenilworth Castle: The Interior of the Great Hall with the Great Tower Beyond 1830
D22038
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 34
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Partial watermark ‘rnard | 20’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘34’ bottom left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 34’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, this drawing shows the ruined Great Hall of Kenilworth Castle from the archway leading from the Saintlowe Tower, with the massive form of the Great Tower in the distance at the centre, north-east across the inner court. The window arches framing it are on the east side of the main floor of the hall, with a fireplace on the left, bay windows to the right and the blank arcade along the wall of the once-vaulted cellars below. There is a view from the east side of the hall in this direction on folio 35 recto (D22040).
Most of the sketches between folios 27 recto (D22024) and 37 verso (D22045) show Kenilworth. For the history of the castle and Turner’s subsequent watercolour, which Eric Shanes has described as a ‘synthesis’ of sketches between folios 28 verso (D22027) and 37 verso,1 see under folio 29 recto (D22028).

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
Shanes 1979, p.156

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Kenilworth Castle: The Interior of the Great Hall with the Great Tower Beyond 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-kenilworth-castle-the-interior-of-the-great-hall-with-the-r1148679, accessed 29 March 2024.