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 Kenilworth Castle: Leicester's Building and the Great Tower 1830

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Kenilworth Castle: Leicester's Building and the Great Tower’ 1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 36 Recto:
Kenilworth Castle: Leicester’s Building and the Great Tower 1830
D22042
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 36
Pencil on white wove paper, 120 x 203 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘36’ bottom left, upside down
Stamped in black ‘CCXXXVIII – 36’ top left, upside down
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation, this is a study at Kenilworth Castle shows the ruined Elizabethan south and east fronts of Leicester’s Building on the left, with the Great Tower across the inner court to the north. The viewpoint is from the foot of a slope just inside the outer castle wall; the corner of Leicester’s building is now obscured from this immediate angle by a large tree. The Great Tower is continued a little way onto folio 35 verso opposite (D22041), while Leicester’s Building is seen again on the verso (D22043).
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: Leicester’s Building and the Great Tower 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-leicesters-building-and-the-great-tower-r1148683, accessed 26 April 2024.