Joseph Mallord William Turner

Warwick Castle from the Avon Bridge

1830

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

License this image

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Room

View by appointment

Artist: Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Part of: Kenilworth Sketchbook
Medium: Graphite on paper
Dimensions: Support: 120 × 203 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Reference: D22048
Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 39

Catalogue entry

This is a continuation of the view of the River Avon and Warwick Castle from the west on folio 38 verso opposite (D22047), under which the subject is discussed; the double-page sketch was recognised by John Ruskin and others 1 as the source of a watercolour of about 1830 (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester),2 engraved in 1832 for Turner’s Picturesque Views in England and Wales (Tate impressions: T04594, T04595).

On this page Caesar’s Tower, the gatehouse and Guy’s Tower are shown, with the pinnacled tower of St Mary’s Church beyond (drawn twice) in the town to the north-west. In the foreground only a couple of stone balusters of the bridge are shown, and in the watercolour there are extensive repairs to the parapet in progress, but this was probably artistic licence on Turner’s part, as no such work is mentioned in the castle’s records.3

Matthew Imms
August 2013

Cook and Wedderburn 1904, p.566; see also Finberg 1909, II, p.730; Sewter 1952 p.20; Hawcroft 1966, p.27; Shanes 1979, p.156; Hartley 1984, p.48; and Nugent and Croal 1997, p.84.

Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.398 no.841, reproduced.

See Hartley 1984, p.48, and Nugent and Croal 1997, p.84.

Read full Catalogue entry