Joseph Mallord William Turner

Drawn with the sketchbook inverted. Among other details of a gate and an oriel window, Turner has sketched the west end of Magdalen College Chapel at upper left and Magdalen Tower on the right, both as seen from the High Street.

See notes to folio 43 verso (D07659) for Oxford views in this sketchbook and their relationship to Turner’s picture View of the High-Street, Oxford painted for James Wyatt (Loyd Collection; on loan to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford).1 Looking west to Carfax, this picture did not require sketches of Magdalen, at the opposite end of the High, but Turner already envisaged a companion subject. In April 1810 he wrote to warn Wyatt that ‘in case it should be determined to try the other end of the High St’ there would be a delay of at least three years before it could be engraved.2 A companion was painted, but was the more rural View of Oxford from the Abingdon Road (private collection)3 based on a later drawing (Tate D17151; Turner Bequest CXCV (a) A), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1812 and engraved in 1818.