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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1819-29 Italy and after > Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and French ... > Holland Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner ?Faversham from the East, with St Mary of Charity's Church 1825

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘?Faversham from the East, with St Mary of Charity's Church’ 1825
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 250 Recto:
?Faversham from the East, with St Mary of Charity’s Church 1825
D19336
Turner Bequest CCXIV 250
Pencil on white wove paper, 95 x 155 mm
Inscribed by John Ruskin in red ink ‘250’ top right, ascending vertically
Stamped in black ‘CCXIV – 250’ top right, ascending vertically
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
With the page turned horizontally, the focus of this swiftly rendered sketch is the slender spire of a church, likely seen beyond its gabled east end, looking westwards past scattered trees across open country with low hills beyond. The church is perhaps St Mary of Charity’s in the north Kent town of Faversham, suggested as the subject of the more detailed waterside view on folio 249 verso opposite (D19335); see also another slight rural view on its recto (D19334).
The present prospect is comparable with that in the 1829 engraving Faversham, Kent after William Henry Bartlett.1 As discussed under D19335, the town is not far south of the Thames Estuary, with Whitstable, the likely setting of adjacent sketches, about seven miles to its north-north-east.

Matthew Imms
September 2020

1
Published in William Henry Ireland, England’s Topographer. Or a New and Complete History of the County of Kent, vol.II, London 1829, opposite p.598.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘?Faversham from the East, with St Mary of Charity’s Church 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, September 2020, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, March 2023, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-faversham-from-the-east-with-st-mary-of-charitys-church-r1202688, accessed 21 May 2025.