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

Here Turner has made two swift sketches of Oxford, one more developed than the other, each orientated inversely relative to the foliation. They were taken from the opposite side of the city to Headington Hill (see Tate D28304, D28324, D28325; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 7a, 17a, 18) from the village of North Hinksey. These drawings essentially represent the same prospect as is depicted in the highly finished watercolour Oxford, from North Hinksey of 1834–40 (Manchester City Galleries) and in a more abstract rendering of the view produced between 1837 and 1840 (Tate D25220; Turner Bequest CCLXIII 98).1 Turner scholar Eric Shanes proposes that the latter of these colour drawings was derived from the following pencil studies of Oxford in the First Mossel and Oxford sketchbook: Tate D28332–D28334, D28336–D283341; Turner Bequest CCLXXXIX 21a–22a, 23a–26.2