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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8

Joseph Mallord William Turner Chester: The Watertower and Bonewaldesthorne's Tower from the Shropshire Union Canal ?1831

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 60 Verso:
Chester: The Watertower and Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower from the Shropshire Union Canal ?1831
D22262
Turner Bequest CCXXXIX 60a
Pencil on white wove paper, 114 x 191 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Lock’ towards bottom right
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This view was identified as showing ‘Chester’ by A.J. Finberg (died 1939) and the watercolour and Turner scholar C.F. Bell (died 1966) in undated manuscript notes in copies of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory;1 Ian Warrell has added that it shows the Watertower and the city walls.2 The medieval tower, at the north-west corner of the city walls, is in the right foreground, with Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower up steps along the wall beyond;3 they are shown again in one of the sketches on folio 61 recto opposite (D22263) , and also on folio 65 recto (D22271). The tower of Chester Cathedral is loosely indicated on the right.
In the distance to the east are the Bridge of Sighs and Northgate Bridge (see also the recto; D22261) over the Shropshire Union Canal, and Turner notes one of the locks at the basin in the foreground, now between Earls Port and Tower Street; the view beyond the towers, set in a park, is obscured by bridges carrying a railway and a dual carriageway. Turner had first recorded this subject in 1801, in the Chester sketchbook (Tate D05138; Turner Bequest LXXXII 59).
For other views of Chester, see under folio 14 verso (D22176).

Matthew Imms
April 2014

1
A.J. Finberg, undated MS notes in a copy of Finberg 1909, Tate Britain Prints and Drawings Room, vol.II, p.735; C.F. Bell, undated MS notes in another copy at the same location, vol.II, p.735.
2
Ian Warrell, notes from 1993 and later in Tate catalogue files.
3
See Steve Howe, ‘16. The Watertower’, Chester: A Virtual Stroll around the Walls, accessed 17 September 2013, http://www.chesterwalls.info/watertower.html.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Chester: The Watertower and Bonewaldesthorne’s Tower from the Shropshire Union Canal ?1831 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, April 2014, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-chester-the-watertower-and-bonewaldesthornes-tower-from-the-r1148908, accessed 29 March 2024.