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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Thames, London and South of England 1821 ... > London Bridge and Portsmouth Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Pavilion and Syon House from Isleworth Ait on the River Thames c.1824

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Pavilion and Syon House from Isleworth Ait on the River Thames’ c.1824
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 42 Recto:
The Pavilion and Syon House from Isleworth Ait on the River Thames c.1824
D17989
Turner Bequest CCVI 42
Pencil on white wove paper, 100 x 160 mm
Part watermark ‘lls | 1’
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘42’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCVI – 42’ bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Building on Finberg’s tentative identification,1 Turner scholar C.F. Bell suggested in an undated note that this sketch shows ‘Sion House and Alcove’. 2 The view does indeed show the Pavilion, a classical rotunda sometimes called the Alcove, at the southern corner of Syon Park (see the entry for Tate D08163; Vaughan Bequest CXVIII I), with Syon House beyond to the north-east; the view continues a short way onto folio 41 verso opposite (D17988).
The viewpoint appears to be the ait opposite Isleworth, where Turner rented Sion Ferry House for a productive period in 1805 (see David Blayney Brown’s ‘Thames sketchbooks c.1804–14’ section in the present catalogue), and he was still living nearby at Twickenham and working along the Thames in the early 1820s; see the overall Introduction to the present Thames-related section.

Matthew Imms
December 2014

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.625.
2
Undated MS notes by C.F. Bell (died 1966) in a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.I, p.625.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Pavilion and Syon House from Isleworth Ait on the River Thames c.1824 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, December 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-pavilion-and-syon-house-from-isleworth-ait-on-the-river-r1172707, accessed 25 April 2024.