Joseph Mallord William Turner

Engraved:
Etching and mezzotint by Turner and J.C. Easling, ‘S^t. Catherine’s Hill near Guildford’, published Turner, [?1] June 1811

St Catherine’s Hill, taking its name from the dedication of the ruined medieval chapel at its summit, stands between the Portsmouth road and the River Wey about a mile south of the centre of Guildford in Surrey. Along with Hind Head Hill, Water Mill and Hedging and Ditching (see Tate D08130, D08140, D08151; Turner Bequest CXVII C, M, W) this Liber Studiorum composition is derived from slight sketches made in the Spithead sketchbook (Tate; Turner Bequest C), generally thought to have been made on Turner’s round trip from London to Portsmouth to London in October and November 1807.1 In this case the source was a drawing (D06613; C 73a) from a sequence of studies (see also D06611, D06615, D06617; C 72a, 74a, 75a), although Turner had first recorded the chapel in the early 1790s (Tate D00183, D40227; Turner Bequest XVII H and verso) and again in a sequence from various angles in the 1805 Wey, Guildford sketchbook (Tate D06306, D06314, D06316, D06318; Turner Bequest XCVIII 110a, 114a, 115a, 116a). There is also an oil sketch from the latter year (Tate N02676),2 where the chapel is seen from near St Catherine’s Lock to the south, east of the road which appears in the Liber design; the latter may have been partly informed by the central passage of the oil study.

Ruskin favourably compared the ‘fullness and completion’ of the ‘home’ subjects to the Continental in the Liber, contrasting ‘the cattle and road of the St. Catherine’s Hill, with the foreground of the Bonneville’3 (for drawing for the latter, see Tate D08164; Turner Bequest CXVIII J). Stopford Brooke commended the ‘spiritual power’ he detected in the chapel’s presence: