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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Isle of Wight 1827 > The House and Grounds at East Cowes ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner East Cowes Castle from the South 1827

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘East Cowes Castle from the South’ 1827
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
East Cowes Castle from the South 1827
D40084
Ink on blue wove paper, 140 x 192 mm
Inscribed ?by John Ruskin in red ink ‘[?505]’ bottom left
Inscribed in pencil ‘cclx.26’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This very rapid and summary drawing is not mentioned in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.1 It shows East Cowes Castle, but whether from the slopes to its south-east, looking across the valley of the River Medina towards Cowes (see under Tate D20704; Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 1), with trees lightly indicated, or from the banks of the river below, looking north-east to the house beyond the masts of boats, is a moot point. There is a more substantial drawing looking from the house itself on the recto (D24862; CCLX 26).
Like several others in the present subsection, this drawing was categorised in Finberg’s 1909 Inventory in one of the sections of works on blue paper ‘mostly connected with “French Rivers”’.2 It is among dozens of blue paper studies made in and around East Cowes Castle, presumably during the same visit. For more on the various aspects of the house (demolished in about 1950), and its lost grounds as depicted by Turner, see the Introduction to this subsection.

Matthew Imms
November 2015

1
See A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.807.
2
See Ibid., pp.806–13, CCLX, ‘Pencil and ink on blue paper: mostly connected with “French Rivers” series’, c.1830; see also Ian Warrell, Turner on the Seine, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1999, pp.30, 253 note 84.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘East Cowes Castle from the South 1827 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, November 2015, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, November 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-east-cowes-castle-from-the-south-r1182729, accessed 19 April 2024.