J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Turner Bequest CCXX F, G, H

The three related watercolour studies grouped here have been identified in recent years as showing Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, seen from the valley of Lukely Brook to its north, as discussed below. They had previously been thought to depict various French subjects, likely owing to their initial listing in A.J. Finberg’s 1909 Inventory of the Turner Bequest at the beginning of section CCXX, ‘Water colours connected with the Meuse-Moselle tour (1)’, dated around 1826 and mostly ‘in body colour [i.e. gouache] on blue paper’.1 As presented in the current catalogue, Turner’s first tour focusing on those rivers took place in 1824, when he used sketchbooks alone; his second visit in 1839 (which Finberg dated to 1834) resulted in many colour studies on blue sheets, probably made soon after his return, and most of the works in section CCXX are now dated to that year.

That being said, the first twelve sheets in Finberg’s section (Tate D20207 –D20219; Turner Bequest CCXX A–L), including the three grouped here, are actually in watercolour on white paper, and he noted them as having been part of a parcel of sheets somewhat idiosyncratically labelled by John Ruskin: ‘32., Twenty slight coloured sketches, chiefly from Dieppe. There are one or two in this parcel that some people might like. I consider them all done in some careless or sickly state of mind, and have therefore put all aside, except one, taken out for an example, and seven, too large, put elsewhere, leaving here 12.’2

The other nine of the twelve are now associated with the 1826 tour addressed by John Chu’s ‘Northern France c.1826–32’ section. Of five views in and around Dieppe which open his grouping of separate sheets (Tate D20207 –D20211; Turner Bequest CCXX A–E), D20211, as Finberg recognised, show the ruins of ‘Château d’Arc [sic], near Dieppe’.3 Finberg was less certain of the three sheets isolated here, suggesting Liège,4 on the River Meuse in eastern Belgium, which is overlooked by a fortress complex; compare an 1839 colour study, Tate D24664 (Turner Bequest CCLIX 99).

By the time of his 1997 Tate Gallery Turner on the Loire exhibition, Ian Warrell had retitled these three works as distant views of Château d’Arques, as documented in their individual entries. This was partly on the grounds of the technical similarities of the twelve sheets discussed above, D20207 –D20219, which are all painted on Whatman paper acquired in the 1790s, in some cases possibly before the sheets were divided or subdivided.5 Warrell observed that D20213 (Turner Bequest CCXX G), included here as a Carisbrooke view and bearing a partial Whatman watermark, ‘was painted immediately above a simple wash study of an island with a tower’ (D20219; CCXX L), ‘derived from a pencil sketch that Turner made at St-Vaast-la-Hogue during the second week of September 1826’.6 This suggested a date ‘early in 1827’ for Finberg’s run of twelve colour studies, albeit with some reservations.7

However, in 2008 Warrell noted in passing that the three subjects here had been ‘re-identified by W.G. Fox since 1997 as views of Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight.’8 He expanded on this in his 2015 Turner’s Wessex catalogue, observing that by the late 1820s Turner had ‘returned again to Carisbrooke. While there he produced a group of five colour studies, painted in lush verdant colours, with rosy mauve shadows suggestive of full summer: three are in the Tate Collection; the other two are at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.’9 For earlier visits to the castle, see under Tate D08274 (Turner Bequest CXXI R). Addressing the Cambridge sheets in 1979, Andrew Wilton had noted that Fitzwilliam curator Malcolm Cormack had dated them to about 1824–31,10 ‘but this is perhaps a little late, though, as he says, the drawings do have points of similarity with Turner’s work for the Rivers of England series of [the] early 1820s. However, their technique is not far removed from that of Turner's Thames drawings of c.1806; they may be connected with the West Country tours of 1811 and 1813.’11

Warrell characterised all five views: ‘In each of them the width of what is now the meagre trickle of Lukely Brook is exaggerated so that it looks more like a significant river. These watercolours had previously been linked with various other locations, but were identified as Carisbrooke by William Fox in 2003.’12 The brook, which flows north-eastwards, with Carisbrooke on its left bank and the castle on its right, towards Newport, ‘has been greatly modified for centuries, first to support industry such as milling, brewing and tanning, and more recently for flood defence. It can be prone to flooding’.13 It is difficult to confirm Turner’s viewpoints or any artistic licence owing to later trees and housing in the valley, although the general direction of each view is suggested in its entry; all three feature the same three-arched bridge and neighbouring buildings, perhaps a mill.

After mentioning in passing a potential link to ‘a watercolour of the city of Trier (or Trèves) on the River Mosel (Moselle), painted on a similar sheet using the same range of colours, which must date from after 1824 (Private Collection)’,14 Warrell noted ‘grounds to believe that [the Carisbrooke views] relate to a previously unknown trip to the Isle of Wight that Turner appears to have made in the summer of 1826.’15 The possibility of such a trip, informed by Warrell’s detailed reasoning, is set out in detail in the overall Introduction to this section; however, as this currently remains a matter for speculation, the three Tate Carisbrooke colour studies are here dated to about 1827, as is a comparable sketch in pencil grouped with other blue paper drawings from the 1827 tour (Tate D20316; Turner Bequest CCXXIV 26).