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

Both Finberg and Turner scholar C.F. Bell suggested in undated notes that this page and similar folio 47 recto opposite (D18652) show ‘Sion House, Isleworth, with Sion “Alcove” &c’.1 With the page turned vertically, there are four main views by the River Thames around Isleworth on the present page, divided by horizontal pencil lines. At the top the tower of All Saints Church is seen on the west bank; second is a slight view of Syon House, north-east of Isleworth, with a small sketch of distant buildings above.

Third is a view east from near the church: now obscured by trees, the obelisk in the centre stands near the river bank north of Kew Observatory, with the tall, stepped pagoda in Kew Gardens shown just to its right, but actually about a mile beyond. Lastly, the church is seen to the west, with the characteristic sails of a Thames barge to its left. Turner had rented Sion Ferry House, near the church, in 1805 (see David Blayney Brown’s ‘Thames sketchbooks c.1804–14’ section in the present catalogue), and he was living at nearby Twickenham in the early 1820s; see the sketchbook’s Introduction.