Joseph Mallord William Turner

?Buildings on or near Wren’s Nest Hill, Dudley

1830

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
Kenilworth Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 120 × 203 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D22064
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 47 a

Catalogue entry

The subject remains unconfirmed, but is possibly a group of buildings on the slopes of Wren’s Nest Hill, north-west of the centre of Dudley; if so, they do not survive. The hill was subject to intensive limestone mining and quarrying for building stone and lime used in mortar and fertiliser and in the blast furnaces of the local iron industry.1 It is the viewpoint for the drawings on folios 59 recto and verso (D22085, D22086, D22087; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 57, 57a, 58) and the same buildings are possibly shown on folios 60 verso and 61 recto (D22088 D22089; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 58a, 59).
At the bottom right is a smaller sketch of a rolling wooded landscape with buildings near the centre, which may be the same as those in the main view.

Matthew Imms
August 2013

1
See ‘Wren’s Nest National Nature Reserve’, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, accessed 11 July 2013, http://www.dudley.gov.uk/resident/environment/countryside/nature-reserves/wrens-nest-nnrwrens-nest-nnr/; and ‘The Geology of Wren’s Nest Nature Reserve’, BGCS: The Black Country Geological Society, accessed 11 July 2013, http://www.bcgs.info/pdf_files/wrens_nest_leaflet_2009.pdf.

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