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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1787-1801 Student and master > Architectural and Other Subjects c.1797 ... > Swans Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Ewenny Priory with the Ogmore Estuary Beyond 1798

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Ewenny Priory with the Ogmore Estuary Beyond’ 1798
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 24 Verso:
?Ewenny Priory with the Ogmore Estuary Beyond 1798
D01723
Turner Bequest XLII 48
Pencil and gouache on buff laid paper, 174 x 125 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘E’ bottom left
Stamped in black ‘XLII – 48’ bottom left
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The drawing is continued on folio 25 recto opposite (D01724; Turner Bequest XLII 49). Finberg pointed out that the inscribed ‘E’ in the lower left corner probably refers to Ewenny Priory,1 which Turner had already drawn on his first tour of South Wales; see the Smaller South Wales book (Tate D00472; Turner Bequest XXV 11) and the watercolour exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797 (National Museum Wales, Cardiff).2
Both those drawings show the interior of the priory, which Turner sketches again in this book, on folios 27 verso and 29 verso–30 recto (D01729, D01733–D01734; Turner Bequest XLII 54, 58–59). The drawing of the interior on D01729 is also inscribed ‘E’. If this identification is correct, the distant estuary here should be that of the River Ogmore, but there are no hills of the size indicated in Turner’s sketch between Ewenny and the sea.

Andrew Wilton
March 2013

1
Finberg 1909, I, p.103.
2
Andrew Wilton, J.M.W. Turner: His Life and Work, Fribourg 1979, p.325 no.227, pl.28.

How to cite

Andrew Wilton, ‘?Ewenny Priory with the Ogmore Estuary Beyond 1798 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, March 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, April 2015, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-ewenny-priory-with-the-ogmore-estuary-beyond-r1173919, accessed 27 April 2024.