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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Margate, London and Surrey c.1829-45 > Kent Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Great Gateway of St Augustine's Abbey, with Canterbury Cathedral Beyond c.1830

Image 1 of 2
  • Enhanced image
Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Great Gateway of St Augustine's Abbey, with Canterbury Cathedral Beyond’ c.1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 26 Verso:
The Great Gateway of St Augustine’s Abbey, with Canterbury Cathedral Beyond c.1830
D35803
Turner Bequest CCCLXIII 25a
Pencil on white wove paper, 76 x 98 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Cant’ bottom centre
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The view is north-west from the precincts of St Augustine’s Abbey, beyond the turrets of its Great Gateway (or Fyndon Gate) gatehouse of 1300–9 at the junction of Monastery Street and Lady Wootton’s Green towards the east end of Canterbury Cathedral. The jumble of forms at the bottom right may indicate ruins on the future site of the north range of St Augustine’s College (now part of The King’s School), designed by William Butterfield in the 1840s,1 the ground plan of which encompasses Turner’s viewpoint.
The scene had been long familiar to Turner. There are two variant watercolours at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven,2 comparable with the present view but taken from nearer the foot of the tower; the first may have been the version exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1793.3 He had also made an elaborate, annotated pencil drawing of the street front of the gateway in 1794 (Tate D01110; Turner Bequest XXXVI P).
For other views of Canterbury in this sketchbook, see under folio 3 recto (D35761).

Matthew Imms
September 2016

1
See John Newman, North East and East Kent, The Buildings of England, 2nd ed., Harmondsworth 1976, pp.232–4.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, pp.303–4 no.32, reproduced, and p.304 no.33, reproduced.
3
See ibid., p.303 no.31.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Great Gateway of St Augustine’s Abbey, with Canterbury Cathedral Beyond c.1830 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2016, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2016, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-great-gateway-of-st-augustines-abbey-with-canterbury-r1183766, accessed 25 April 2024.