Joseph Mallord William Turner

The view is to the north-west, with East Cowes Castle up on the right and Cowes across the River Medina below, and the tower of St Mary’s Church, Cowes, designed by Turner’s Isle of Wight host John Nash1 above the masts of boats clustered near Cowes Castle on the shore. For similar views, see under Tate D2084 (Turner Bequest CCXXVII a 1).

Having been exhibited as a French subject in the nineteenth century, 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.

Verso:

Blank; inscribed ?by John Ruskin in red ink ‘[?498]’ bottom left; inscribed in pencil ‘cclx.9’ bottom right.