Joseph Mallord William Turner

Peterborough Cathedral: The Interior, Looking East from the West Door towards the Organ Screen

1797

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In Tate Britain

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Artist
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of
North of England Sketchbook
Medium
Graphite on paper
Dimensions
Support: 210 × 270 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference
D00999
Turner Bequest XXXIV 88

Catalogue entry

The subject is drawn with the page turned horizontally. Turner took some interest in the tombstones that frequently pave the floors of churches and cathedrals in England. In 1796, he had shown at the Royal Academy a watercolour of the interior of Westminster Abbey, St Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapel (British Museum, London)1 in which he inscribes his own name and date of birth on a slab in the foreground.
As David Hill observes, with this study Turner reached the end of his book as it would originally have been bound; it is the last drawing of the tour. Finberg noted immediately after his entry for this page: ‘A number of leaves at end of book have been torn or cut out’;2 those following have been bound in out of sequence, with their correct positions indicated in their respective entries; see the Concordance in the sketchbook’s Introduction.
1
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.314 no.138, reproduced.
2
Finberg 1909, I, p.73.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in brown ink with Turner Bequest monogram.

Andrew Wilton
January 2013

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