Joseph Mallord William Turner

?Ruins of the Priory at Orford

c.1824

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In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 118 × 115 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D18284
Turner Bequest CCIX 70

Catalogue entry

These previously unidentified sketches depicting the ruins of a gothic building may show the vestiges of the ancient priory at Orford in Suffolk. Sir Ralph Glanville, Justiciar of Henry II, founded the Augustinian Butley Priory in 1171.1 It was dissolved in 1538 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the vestiges of the building were converted to residential use in the eighteenth century.2

Other sketches of Orford in this sketchbook are Tate D18299, D18304–D18309; Turner Bequest CCIX 82, 86a–89. See also Tate impression T04524.

Alice Rylance-Watson
January 2015

‘Butley Abbey and Priory Gatehouse’, English Heritage, accessed 29 January 2015, http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1030850 see also Butley Priory, accessed 29 January 2015, http://www.butleypriory.org.uk/page2.html

Ibid. The topographical printmakers Nathaniel and Samuel Buck published a print of The East View of Butley-Priory, in the County of Suffolk in 1738, as part of their Views of Ruins of Castles and Abbeys in England project. See an impression at Albion Prints, accessed 29 January 2015, http://www.albion-prints.com/buck-1738-folio-architecture-print-east-view-of-butley-priory-suffolk-11972-p.asp

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