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

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > Sandycombe Lodge c.1808-12 > Windmill and Lock Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner The Portico of Carlton House, London c.1808-11

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Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘The Portico of Carlton House, London’ c.1808-11
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Folio 15 Verso:
The Portico of Carlton House, London circa 1808–11
D07983
Turner Bequest CXIV 15a
Pencil on white wove paper, 87 x 117 mm
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
This rather slight drawing shows the basic elements of the central portico on the north front of Carlton House, the Prince Regent’s London home. The sprawling building on the south side of Pall Mall was designed by Henry Holland, built between 1783 and 1795, and demolished in 1826.1 The portico was six columns wide, with a royal coat of arms in the pediment; the ground plan of the left-hand columns is indicated at the top left. They are thought to have been recycled in the east and west porticos of the National Gallery, built nearby a few years later.2
The Carlton House portico appears in a large watercolour diagram which accompanied Turner’s first perspective lecture at the Royal Academy in January 1811 (see the Introduction to the sketchbook), showing the whole of the north front with rusticated wings and its colonnaded screen and gateways in front, in which Turner combined a scale elevation with naturalistic shading (Tate D17119; Turner Bequest CXCV 148).3 There are further studies of Carlton House on folios 16 recto opposite, 49 verso–50 recto, 61 verso (D07984, D08023, D08024, D08039) and possibly 39 recto (D08011).
The north façade and screen are shown in a watercolour of about 1811 by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd and in anonymous engravings published by Ackermann in 1809 and by Laurie and Whittle in 1813 (London Metropolitan Archives).

Matthew Imms
January 2012

1
See Maurice Davies, Turner as Professor: The Artist and Linear Perspective, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1992, p.33.
2
‘About the Building: Building the Gallery’, The National Gallery, accessed 24 February 2010, http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/history/about-the-building/about-the-building/*/viewPage/4.
3
Davies 1992, pp.31, 33.

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘The Portico of Carlton House, London c.1808–11 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, January 2012, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-portico-of-carlton-house-london-r1134759, accessed 19 April 2024.