Joseph Mallord William Turner

Newark Priory is a twelfth-century Augustinian house near Ripley. The surviving ruins comprise the walls of the presbytery and south transept, rising to a steep gable. Hill surmises that the priory was Turner’s last stop on his trip along the Wey Navigation, eight miles and six locks from Guildford. He made four sketches in this sketchbook, looking at the ruins from different angles. The others are on folios 106 verso, 107 verso and 108 verso (D06298, D06300, D06302). Noting that they are generally from positions near the stream to the north, Hill observes that they ‘seem to have been made with the intention of arriving at an understanding of the layout of the walls’.1 Turner also made three oil sketches of the priory (including Tate N02302, N02677),2 presumably on the same visit working from the motif rather than later in the studio. These favour more southerly viewpoints.