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

This is one of a large group of separate studies, most of which were made in gouache and watercolour on blue paper, associated with a visit to Petworth House in West Sussex, the home of the third Earl of Egremont. For more information, see the Introduction to this section.

The setting for this vivid study is Petworth’s Old Library, which was used as a studio by artists; for more information, see the entry for Tate D22682 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 20). For other studies of the Old Library, see D22691 and D22764–D22765 (Turner Bequest CCXLIV 29, 102–103). The room is sometimes referred to as ‘Turner’s Studio’, but Christopher Rowell found little evidence for this, noting it is unlikely to have been Turner’s primary base given the room’s evident use by other artists during this visit and the reported privacy of the room Turner used as a studio: there, according to Francis Chantrey (1781–1841), he worked ‘with his door locked against everybody but the master of the house’.1

The present composition is unusual in Turner’s oeuvre in its focus on a vase of flowers, which explode with colour in the foreground. Ian Warrell has argued, however, that Turner paid more attention to studying flora in his studies than is often realised;2 in terms of the present Petworth section, a group of pen and ink studies of dock leaves in the Petworth Sketchbook (see separate subsection) supports this view. As a near still life of flowers, though, the present study remains rare within Turner’s practice. The sculpture glimpsed in the background is Joseph Nollekens’s Seated Venus (Petworth collection).3

Verso:

Blank, save for inscriptions: inscribed in pencil ‘9 a’ centre; stamped in black ‘CCXLIV 23’ bottom left; stamped in black with Turner Bequest monogram bottom left.