Joseph Mallord William Turner

?Ashburnham Forge; Pevensey Bay in the Distance

?1810

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

Not on display

Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Vale of Heathfield Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 181 × 228 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D10226
Turner Bequest CXXXVII 12 a

Catalogue entry

Drawn with the sketchbook inverted and continued on folio 14 (D10227; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 13) this is perhaps a view of Ashburnham Forge near Ashburnham Place, in the light of Turner’s inscription below the building in the immediate foreground. The Ashburnhams were ironmasters as well as landowners, deriving much of their fortune from iron-smelting. Their forge was situated in a dip, as seen here. The forge closed in 1813 but, as Eric Shanes has pointed out, Turner must have been aware of it when he made his drawings in 1810.1 For a view of the Ashburnham Place estate, with a timber wagon presumably collecting fuel for the forge, see folios 44 verso–45 (D10311–D10313; Turner Bequest CXXXVII 68–9).

David Blayney Brown
March 2011

1
Eric Shanes, Turner in 1066 Country, exhibition catalogue, Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Hastings 1998, p.11.

Read full Catalogue entry

Explore

You might like

Left Right

In the shop

Browse the shop