Joseph Mallord William Turner Guy's Cliffe House, on the River Avon near Warwick 1830
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Joseph Mallord William Turner,
Guy's Cliffe House, on the River Avon near Warwick
1830
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 28 Verso:
Guy’s Cliffe House, on the River Avon near Warwick 1830
D22374
Turner Bequest CCXL 28a
Turner Bequest CCXL 28a
Pencil on white wove paper, 68 x 110 mm
Partial watermark ‘Gat | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Cliff’ bottom right
Partial watermark ‘Gat | 18’
Inscribed by Turner in pencil ‘Cliff’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
References
1909
A.J. Finberg, A Complete Inventory of the Drawings of the Turner Bequest, London 1909, vol.II, p.739, CCXL 28a, as ‘Mansion, with lake’.
1975
Gerald Wilkinson, Turner’s Colour Sketches 1820–34, London 1975, reproduced p.50.
The hamlet of Guy’s Cliffe lies just north of Warwick (see the contemporary Kenilworth sketchbook, under Tate D22047; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 38a), on the road to Kenilworth (see under Tate D22028; Turner Bequest CCXXXVIII 29) and Coventry (see under folio 9 verso; D22336). The house of the same name, now ruined and largely screened by trees, stands on the south bank of the River Avon, and is seen here from the north; it was built in 1751 in Palladian style, but its character was transformed in 1818 with the elaborate Tudor-style additions which Turner carefully notes here, with additional details below, and there were further changes later in the century. To the left is the tower of St Mary’s Chapel, a fifteenth-century building remodelled in the late eighteenth century.1 The landscape is continued to the left across folio 29 recto (D22375), inverted relative to the sketchbook’s foliation.
The subject was tentatively and incorrectly identified as ‘Ashridge?’ (a castellated country house near Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire) 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notes in copies of Finberg’s 1909 Inventory.2 Its correct identification was noted by Dr Bernard Richards as part of unpublished Turner research informed by local knowledge.3 There are other views on folios 29 verso, 30 recto and 31 verso (D22376, D22377, D22380).
Matthew Imms
August 2013
How to cite
Matthew Imms, ‘Guy’s Cliffe House, on the River Avon near Warwick 1830 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, August 2013, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, September 2014, https://www